Tags
Alyssa Miele, Bradford Literary Agency, Catherine Linka, Erin Murphy Literary Agency, Harper Collins, Judy Enderle, Kari Sutherland, Nutschell Windsor, Scholastic, Stephanie Gordon, Sue Alexander Grant, Tara Gonzalez
By Andrea Custer
Every year in September, a handful of writers lucky enough to have secured a spot at SCBWI LA’s Working Writers Retreat gather at a retreat center in Encino. This year it was my immense honor to attend as the recipient of the Sue Alexander Grant.
No one could have done more to set a positive atmosphere at the event, held September 15-17, than Co-Regional Advisor Nutschell Windsor, who began the opening session with this simple promise: all your needs will be met so you can relax and focus entirely on your writing. They delivered on that promise right away, assembling an outstanding First Pages Panel (authors and freelance editors Judy Enderle and Stephanie Gordon, and author Catherine Linka) who provided sincere praise interwoven with meaningful feedback.
Since they met during a UCLA writing class in 1979, Stephanie Gordon and Judy Enderle have led prolific careers as writing partners, publishing more than 20 picture books, middle grade, and young adult novels like 
Agent and author 
Kari Sutherland: I’d say both fields help me pinpoint when a character is behaving in a way that isn’t authentic or in a way that may produce a reaction in readers that the author is not intending. Having studied the way minds work, it gives me insight into personality and character growth. With my English studies, I know how to catch and keep a reader’s attention through voice, sentence structure, and plotting. Psychology classes also prepared me to be an excellent listener and to help coax out what a person really wants to say – in this case, through their manuscripts.
Samantha Swank is an assistant editor at Scholastic, where she works on fiction and non-fiction for ages zero-eight. She is a faculty member for the 
Catherine Linka
Kite Tales 