by Julia Edwards

The 2024 Sue Alexander Grant contest opens this week—April 13. The winner receives a guaranteed spot and free tuition to the Working Writers Retreat (to be held at the Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Encino, September 27–29, 2024). We asked last year’s Sue Alexander Grant recipient, Julia Edwards, to talk about her experience at the 2023 retreat.

“I am a writer.” 

SCBWI-Los Angeles Co-Regional Advisor Nutschell Windsor encouraged the attendees gathered at the 2023 Working Writers Retreat to write down these four words. I penned the phrase quickly, not realizing at first how much I needed to write it. How much I needed to think it. After a several-year hiatus from the retreat due to COVID and an aversion to online anything, I was finally shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow writers. Colleagues. Friends.

And I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it.

I steal moments out of my day to write, sometimes hunched over my computer waiting in a pick-up line at school. On lucky days, I get to lose myself in a project. Other days, I don’t open the computer. And so, I can go weeks without remembering those simple words: I am a writer. At the Working Writers Retreat, I read my pages to writers, agents, editors. I enjoyed lunchtime conversations about new projects. I pondered craft. I reveled in listening to fellow writers’ first pages. I felt like a writer again.

At many a conference, I’d heard advice about finding a writing group, but I’d never had much luck in that department. Must be me, I’d thought. I’m too much of a loner. And I’d pretty much given up that quest. Until I attended my first Working Writers Retreat in 2017. There, I met a group of talented, insightful, generous writers who, months later, invited me to join their group. Since then, we have traded more pages than I can count. I trust those writers to see what I cannot see. I value their wisdom, and I need their encouragement. 

Nothing about the writing process is easy. (Hello! Querying?) But spending quality time among fellow writers is as necessary as having an idea and carving out time to write. It is the inspirational fuel that gets us through it all. We need to be among those kindred spirits who know what it is to toil for months (years!) to exorcize a story from our souls. 

This is all to say: GO to the Working Writers Retreat in September! And submit your application to the Sue Alexander Award for a chance to win a free ride. You owe it to the writer in you. You are a writer.

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About the Sue Alexander Grant

Author Sue Alexander was a founding member of SCBWI and was instrumental in the formation of the L.A. chapter. Established in her memory, this grant brings her encouraging spirit to one promising writer. Submissions for this year’s grant will be accepted from April 13 through May 25, 2024. For rules and entry instructions, please visit: https://www.scbwi.org/regions/losangeles/sue-alexander-grant.

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Julia Edwards won the 2023 SCBWI-L.A. Sue Alexander Grant for I SPEAK FOR THE TREES, a magical birth-of-an-activist middle grade. Her previous middle-grade adventure, ANNO CATTI, was a two-time award winner. Julia’s background is in playwriting, which she studied at Brown University and UC San Diego. She has several works published through YouthPLAYS, including LOCKDOWN, which premiered at South Coast Repertory, and A LOSER LIKE YOU, which is featured in the anthology BULLYING, INK and has been performed in high schools around the country. Her play FAMILY PLANNING, performed in LA-area residential homes, won the LA Ovation award for Best Small Production. A writing teacher and coach, she currently volunteers with ScholarMatch, a nonprofit that guides first generation and low-income students through the college process.

Working Writers Retreat photo by Nutschell A. Windsor. Author photo provided by Julia Edwards.