10 Wednesday Sep 2025
Posted in Great News!
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Caroline L. Perry, Dan McCauley, Laura Segal Stegman, Margaret Finnegan, Molly Ruttan, PB Rippey, Rosalind Barden, Sasha Mayer, SCBWI community, SCBWI members, Sherry Shahan, Tim Cummings
SCBWI loves celebrating our members’ successes and noteworthy news, and there are many! Read on to find out who’s got something to shout about. Digital high-fives welcome in the comments!
Continue reading02 Wednesday Aug 2023
Posted in Contests & Grants, SAG, Writers' Retreat
Tags
Cara J. Stevens, Julia Edwards, PB Rippey, R.S. Mellette, SCBWI community, SCBWI members, Sue Alexander Grant, Working Writer's Retreat
by Brenda Scott Royce, SCBWI-L.A. Contest Coordinator
We’re thrilled to announce this year’s winner of the Sue Alexander Grant, Julia Edwards, for her middle grade novel “I Speak for the Trees”! Here’s what the judges had to say about her excerpt:
“The opening pages of this middle grade novel grabbed me immediately, and the witty narrator had me hooked. While funny and smart, the environmental angle put this over the top for me, in terms of a super layered and entertaining read.”
“Written in a fun, fast and lively style, ‘I Speak for the Trees’ begins at ‘drool o’clock,’ as protagonist Phoenix Moonbeam Reising, a.k.a. Fifi, is awakened by one of her sister’s frequent night terrors. The reader is quickly thrown into a fully drawn family in which the mom is a throwback to the hippie days, the dad has gone mysteriously missing, and the sister is suffering from climate change anxiety….Fifi herself is opinionated, sardonic, smart, and not afraid to get into a physical fight.”
Continue reading23 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in Contests & Grants, Writers Days
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Alison A. Baker, Brenda Scott Royce, Chelsea Lin Wallace, Colleen Paeff, Debbie Friedman, Heather Schmidt, Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh, Kendra Kurosawa, middle grade, nonfiction, PB Rippey, picture book, Sarah Parker-Lee, SCBWI events, SCBWI members, young adult
Every year, SCBWI Los Angeles opens our Writers Day contest to all members attending the event. This year, our anonymous judges chose 10 honorees in Young Adult, Middle Grade, Picture Book, and Other (which includes poetry and non-fiction). First place winners in each category receive free tuition to next year’s Writers Day, as well as a manuscript critique from one of this year’s faculty members. There were a lot of wonderful entries and a “20% of total entries” guideline was used to determine how many manuscripts were honored in each category. As Contest Coordinator Karol Ruth Silverstein so aptly put it, “Regardless of whether you win or lose, putting your work out there to be judged by entering the contest is a courageous act in itself. So let me first congratulate all of you who entered.”
And now, our 2018 Writers Day winners! (If you’d like to contact any of the winners to request their manuscript or discuss publication, please let us know!) Continue reading
21 Wednesday Feb 2018
Tags
Andrea Custer, Book Festivals, Book Fests, Claire Moore, conferences, Conventions, Helena Ku Rhee, Jacob Gerhardt, Lynn Becker, PB Rippey, Sarah Parker-Lee, SCBWI Annual Summer Conference, SCBWI members, Summer Conference
Hone your craft and connect with other writers, illustrators, and children’s book industry professionals at this year’s book fests and events. Grab your calendars and mark these dates.
Here are the dates for SCBWI’s biggest events for 2018:
March 3
Writers Day
Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles
This is a full-day to immerse yourself in expert keynote speakers, manuscript critiques, and agent pitch sessions. This year’s event, themed “Time to Level Up!,” offers writers a choice of three different levels based on experience and goals.
Read PB Rippey’s writer’s perspective on 2017’s event. Last year’s event also included illustrators. Read Lynn Becker’s illustrator’s perspective.
15 Wednesday Mar 2017
Posted in Industry News, Writers Days
Author and SCBWI member PB Rippey reports on this year’s Writers & Illustrator’s Day.
The Skirball Cultural Center, nestled in the Santa Monica mountains, presides serenely over the 405 freeway’s regular traffic jams, yet is removed from city chaos. Inside, a foyer of vaulted glass, contemporary murals and magical installation lighting exudes a calming aura—one absorbed by the friendly mob checking in to the annual Los Angeles Writers & Illustrators Day on Feb. 25. I sipped complimentary coffee and mingled with chatty strangers, feeling transported from Los Angeles to a rural writer’s retreat. Continue reading
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