Whispering Pines--The Retreat And The Conference Center

The New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators was bummed this past week by the news that the University of Rhode Island is closing the Whispering Pines Conference Center and Environmental Education Center at its W. Alton Jones Campus in West Greenwich. This was the site of the NESCBWI Whispering Pines Retreat for nearly 25 years. Though this fall's retreat had been cancelled, for obvious reasons (I'm looking at you 2020 Pandemic), it looks as if planners were  thinking about 2021 before the closure news broke.

Many people attended this retreat annually. It was sort of an intellectual, creative get-together for them and friends/colleagues. My guess is that the NESCBWI will be able to move on and find another site where writers can have the same kind of experience. Change can be good. Embrace the change. Look forward to new opportunities. Ommm.

Personally, I only went to Whispering Pines twice. 

Gail At Whispering Pines

I first attended Whispering Pines in 2006 as a featured writer or mentor/staff member. I don't recall what I was called. This was back in the good old days, because 2006 was two years before 2008 when publishing was hammered by a recession. (This year, we call 2008 the good old days.)  I was very pumped up by the experience. I hadn't been there twenty-four hours before I was thinking about graduate school, as I used to do every few years.

While ruminating still more about my first Whispering Pines experience, I got over my interest in graduate school. I mean, I was over it in days. In part this was due to the fact that the Whispering Pines staff put me up in what is known as the Eisenhower Suite, though I just learned that Ike never slept in it during his visits with Alton Jones. He never stayed overnight there at all. Oh, no! The suite had a private bathroom, though. Even distance MFA programs usually have a residential requirement at some point on a college campus with a traditional housing situation. After Whispering Pines, the concept left me cold. The place spoiled me.

In 2010 I went back to Whispering Pines as a day participant. While there I had one of my first experiences with how sophisticated SCBWI members are in critique groups.

And Now...Pictures!

All my Whispering Pine pictures are from 2006. They are interesting because they are so totally focused on what interests me--walking and eating. My Facebook Friends will confirm that I rarely post about anything else.

First off, the main building. On the campus, there are others where workshops were held and conference participants slept. We had our meals here, and the faculty slept here. I guess I was feeling self-involved and didn't take pictures of anything else.





       






My weekend at Whispering Pines was jam-packed with literary and people stuff. I did squeeze in a walk of around 20 minutes, if memory serves me.






Another view of the so-called Eisenhower Suite.  It was a little rustic, but there was plenty of room to roll out a yoga mat. Years later, I would attend another weekend retreat as a participant. I did swing a room by myself, and it did have a private bath. But it took "rustic" to a whole other level. The Eisenhower Suite was presidential in comparison.




Last, and most importantly, the buffet. There was also a wine bar available the first night. (Maybe the second, too. I don't remember.) I do like a glass of wine with dinner. Whispering Pines had a reputation, at least in the past, for good food. In fact, I have a family member who attended a weekend event there who found the food too good. In my very limited experience of  retreat sites, this place did, indeed, have very good food.

I have a couple of pictures of the dining room, but they're blurry. I have standards to maintain here at O.C.

So Whispering Pines was a lovely spot. But as I am always saying here, on the rare occasions that I go to conferences/retreats/workshops, I am interested in content. I'm sure the Whispering Pines team can bring their well-regarded content to another site.

Coronavirus Cancellations In Childlit

Over the coming weeks I will be covering book launches within the children's literature world and other childlit-related events that are cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak in this country. You can help out these authors by spreading the word about their new books, following them on social media, recommending their books to your libraries, and, of course, purchasing them when you can. I'm collecting this information on a catch-as-catch-can basis. Many more authors and illustrators will be affected who you won't see here.

Today's author info relates to events that appeared on the March Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar and includes nonbook launch appearances. These are followed by some Massachusetts news.

Amphibian Acrobats

R. J. Julia Bookseller's (Madison, Ct.) Event Calendar has been cleared until the end of the month. Leslie Bulion was to have appeared there on Saturday, March 21. Her March 22 Byrd's Books (Bethel, Ct.) appearance has been rescheduled to June 5, 5:30 to 7:30
Both dates supported her book, Amphibian Acrobats.

Amphibian Acrobats, published by Peachtree Publishing Company and illustrated by Robert Meganck, is a nonfiction book dealing with amphibians around the world.

Leslie Bulion is the author of six other books for children, which have been named to lists sponsored by such organizations as the NCTE, Bank Street College, and Book Sense.

A Galaxy of Sea Stars 

 

The Barnes and Noble in West Hartford, Ct. has no events listed for the rest of the month. Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo was to have appeared there on Saturday, March 21 in support of her latest book, A Galaxy of Sea Stars.

A Galaxy of Sea Stars, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux,  involves an eleven-year-old American girl whose family sponsors a family from Afghanistan that includes a girl her own age.

Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo is also the author of Ruby in the Sky, which won a number of awards before publication.

Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale With A Tail

Leslea Newman's March 29 appearance at the River Bend Bookshop in Glastonbury has been cancelled. She was to have read her new book, Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale With A Tail.

Welcoming Elijah, published in January by Charlesbridge and illustrated by Susan Gal, is the story of a young boy celebrating Passover with his family while a kitten observes from outside the house.

Newman is the author of numerous books that have won multiple awards. More importantly, she was at the University of Vermont around the same time I was. Seriously, we overlapped on campus two years. Additionally, she was at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference as a participant the year after I finished my three summers there as the pastry assistant in the kitchen! This is amazing! (I feel that I may have noted this info sometime over the years in a post about Newman, though I can't find it. Well, if I have told people about this before, all I can say is that it is well worth repeating.)

Other Cancellations

The Public Library of New London, Ct. is closed as of last Friday, March 13. Katie L. Carroll and Patrick Scalisi were to have appeared at the library's Local Author Fest on Sat., March 28.


The Storytellers' Cottage in Simsbury, Ct.  is closed for the rest of the month. Joyce Lapin was to have appeared there on March 21st.

The New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators spring conference on May 1   through May 3 has been cancelled.

The New England SCBWI art show, Art From the Heart, at the Wedeman Gallery, Lasell College, from May 8-30, has been cancelled.

NESCBWI Encore For Writers Coming To Connecticut

The New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators will be holding this year's Encore for Writers at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut on Saturday, September, 14, starting at 9:00 AM. Registration begins today.

Encore is a repeat of some of the best received workshops held at the NESCBWI spring conference. This year's workshops come from the last two conferences and include:

• Themes, Threads, and the Core with Erin Dionne
• Show Don’t Tell Your Manuscript’s Opening with Jen Malone
• Lie Your Way to Greatness: Using a Synopsis to Create a Revision Plan with Tara Sullivan
• A New Starting Place: Maps, Vision Boards, and Blank Pages with Lisa Papademetriou
• If I Only Had a Brand: Successful Branding for Creative Professionals with Jessica Southwick

Registration is $70 for SCBWI members and $100 for nonmembers. Nonmembers can scroll to the bottom of the Encore page for information on how to register.

Conference Day

I spent yesterday at the New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators spring conference. A very good day for me. In the past when I've attended professional events, I've reported on the people I knew who I ran into. Well, I seem to know quite a few people now. Reading a list of them wouldn't be that fascinating. So I will go on to other things.

Workshops Attended

Crafting Short Stories with Trisha Leaver. I may spend a month later this year revising a number of my short stories because of this program.

Show Me the Money with Chris Eboch. This workshop dealt with what I've heard called "income streams" for writers. There are a number of options, but they require so much work! I came up with some pitches for someone else I know while I was in the class. And this workshop was a good lead-in to the afternoon workshop I attended, which was on school visits. School visits, you see, are an income stream for writers.

Bringing Books Alive During School and Library Visits with Marcia Wells and Kwame Alexander. Interesting story here. When I signed up for this workshop, I'd never heard of either of these people. And then Kwame Alexander won the Newbery Medal! Marcia and I have already become Twittermates. I'll be doing a separate post early next month on school visit workshops.

Lunch!

The New England SCBWI regional conference is huge in terms of attendance. Computer Guy went with me a few years ago when we were preparing to republish Saving the Planet & Stuff so he could take a workshop on making e-books from scratch. He was stunned by the crowd then and amazed by the lunchtime picture to your left.

That is why it was terrific that Jill Daily, a member of my writers' group, somehow snagged a table for the nine of us. It was great not to have to negotiate a ballroom full of people on my own. I am afraid I was not a great lunch companion, however, because I was seated in such a way that I had to turn my back to everyone to see the lunch speakers. And I also was busy taking notes and pictures.


During lunch Deborah Freedman received the Crystal Kite Award for the New England region. This was for her book, The Story of Fish and Snail.




Kwayme Alexander spoke during lunch, too. Extremely charming and charismatic. I actually read a book of poetry this year, and I think I'm going to ask for one of Kwayme's (I went to his workshop, so I can call him Kwayme, right?) adult books for my birthday.

The lunch panel discussion was a surprise for me. I wasn't looking forward to it, because it was on nontraditional publishing. I've spent a lot of time on my own nontraditional publishing effort, and this past month I've been promoting the living daylights out of it. I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about hearing more on this subject right now.

But I was totally taken with this discussion. I think what made it good was the variety of viewpoints of the panelists. There was a self-published writer who is very encouraging on the process, someone who runs an editing company that also helps authors self-publish who recognized that some people are going to need help, someone who had been involved in some kind of self-publishing company that wasn't successful, and a traditionally published author new to self-publishing. I appreciated that they didn't all speak with one voice.

The panelists: Chris Cheng, Laura Pauling, Erica Orloff, and Steve Mooser. J. L. Bell, from the NESCBWI was the moderator. There is a reason for that. He's very good at it.

I'll be doing another couple of Conference-related posts later this week.

I am finishing today with a picture of lunch because Kwayme Alexander used a food slide in his lunch talk. It was terrific. People love looking at pictures of food. It is a universal truth.

New Media Day: The Ruth Sanderson Post

Last Saturday's NESCBWI's New Media Day concluded with an interview with author illustrator Ruth Sanderson conducted by Melissa Stewart. Melissa opened with the observation that it is common for people who have been in children's publishing for a long time to do a number of things, a point that tied Ruth to the rest of the day's program, which was all about children's authors moving into something new, digital publishing. She began her career doing artwork for filmstrips (that was techie once) and two years ago she reformatted her version of Cinderella.

In between those two career events, Ruth did textbook illustrations and the covers for book series, including the first Black Stallion paperbacks. She moved into writing with a series of fairy tale retellings that she also illustrated. In addition to what might be called traditional illustration work, Ruth creates licensed products such as cards, puzzles, and flags. She considers herself a commercial artist who shifts with the book and product markets.

She also teaches summers at Hollins University's children's literature program and has applied to Vermont College's MFA program.

Ruth's description of her career made me think of Roxie Munro, who spoke last year at UConn. She also described a career in art and illustration that involved a lot of movement among different types of work and that progressed into new media.

What we may be seeing here is a work model, one that is becoming more visible because of the evolving digital landscape. Illustrators and writers don't do one thing over and over again but move along with market demands and take advantage of new technologies. This is probably nothing new, but the attention digital publishing is receiving is bringing new attention to the changes in how creative people like Ruth Sanderson work.

New Media Day: The Evolving Digital Landscape

I know the wait for me to discuss last Saturday's NESCBWI event New Media Day: Making Sense of the Evolving Digital Landscape has been long and painful. Well, folks, it is over. I am ready to begin.

The overall feeling of the day was that the move to digital reading isn't something to fight and fear. For one thing, it's here. For another, it can work for you.

James McQuivey on Digital Disruptions   

James McQuivey tracks how digital disruptions affect traditional businesses, like publishing. McQuivey describes a world of consumers who are so disrupted in the way that they receive products that any company that doesn't conform to this new method of obtaining product will become irrelevant. Companies must, as he said, follow the consumer. For publishing, what we're describing as a digital disruption is the move to, or at least the inclusion of, eBooks. The more rapidly publishers can embrace digital publication, the sooner they'll be able to give the millions of digital consumers already in existence what they want.

McQuivey made a really interesting historical point. We have experienced technical disruptions in the past. (Wasn't the entire Industrial Revolution a technical disruption?) But those disruptions were slow and expensive. It took a lot of time and money to build mills or develop jet engines. The digital disruption we're experiencing now is far cheaper and faster. More people can become involved, more people can bring ideas to the market.

This is a good thing.

Rubin Pfeffer On Specifics Of Digital Publishing In The Children's Field

Rubin Pfeffer of East West Literary Agency spoke about specifics both digitally and with self-publishing, since many self-published writers go the digital route. According to Pfeffer:

• The numbers of traditional vs. self-published titles are very close to being the same, near the 400,000 mark for each.
• In addition, eBook sales are expected to surpass print books at some point. (Keep in mind that many eBook sales figures include free books.)
• YA is the dominant children's genre in self-publishing and is significant with eBooks since younger children are less likely to have e-readers, the visual components of picture books can be more difficult to create digitally, and e-readers give adults who read YA and don't want anyone to know it some privacy.
• We are witnessing the rise of independent eBook publishers 
• Technology creates new content, eBooks, enhanced eBooks, and apps all being cases in point

Begin, Boon, and Gauthier On Bringing Books Back To Life

Author-illustrators Mary Jane Begin, Emilie Boon, and I took part in a panel discussion moderated by NESCBWI Assistant Regional Advisor and author/editor/historian J. L. Bell. We got even more specific on the subject of digital publishing by answering questions about how we republished out-of-print work as eBooks. We all covered how we determined which of our books to take digital, where we went for technical assistance, and the general difficulties we experienced.

Both Mary Jane and Emilie used eBook publishers for their work, which, since they are illustrators, would have been heavy with artwork. Hearing this coming so soon after hearing Rubin Pfeffer's presentation, which included a list of independent eBook publishers and a description of services they offer, made me decide to refer to my eBook edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff as an artisan book, because my computer guy and I did it ourselves, not realizing until we were well into the project that we had any other option.

When we got to the point of discussing sales, my co-panelists and I had to be the bearers of the most difficult news of the day. We were in agreement that sales have been modest to dreadful. And we were also in agreement as to why that was the case--searchability, or, the term I prefer, discoverability. In a literary world in which nearly 800,000 books are published a year, it's extremely difficult for any one book to be noticed. There's pretty much a pile on and most titles will be buried.

We managed to bring things back up, though, by pointing out that that sales situation could change. Any one of us on the panel could publish something in the future that would make our back list more valuable, and then our eBooks will be available because they don't go out of print. In addition, self-publishing is an exciting, artistic project. Even though it was Mary Jane who said that, not me, I agree that the two years of publishing and marketing my eBook have been a mental kick.

Our Conclusion Is Still To Come

The day ended with an interview with author-illustrator Ruth Sanderson. I'll be giving that its own post later this week.

Thanks to Facebook friend Hazel Mitchell for the panel picture. The final group photo was taken by Joanie Druris of the NESCBWI.

I've Been Places And Seen People

I haven't been able to finish posting about Wednesday night's UConn event Gendered Publishing, and I've already been over-stimulated by another terrific program, the NESCBWI's New Media Day: Making Sense of the Evolving Digital Landscape. And I'm not just saying that because I was on the afternoon's panel with Mary Jane Begin and Emilie Boon.

This was another of the NESCBWI programs run by children's science writer Melissa Stewart for the Published and Listed Program. The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators has a large membership of prepublished writers that it serves very well. In recent years it's been making an effort to provide programs for members who have been traditionally published. Melissa has been in charge of the New England divisions PAL programs and has creating creative short-term experiences like today's.

When I've had a chance to finish my account of last week's UConn panel, rest assured that I will give you a rundown on everything that happened today. In the meantime, enjoy this photo of my panel mates and our moderator having lunch. Hey, folks, this is the kind of insider, backroom information you don't get at just any blog.

And, yes, it's proof that I was in the insider backroom.