More Information: bit.ly/1NoaXVt
Nicola’s Books will be at this event throughout the day selling books.
Homegrown Talent Schedule
Schedule (subject to change)
8-8:55 AM: Registration / Mingle / Coffee
9-9:10 AM: Welcome and Opening
9:10-9:20 AM: Brief Introduction to Thomson-Shore
9:20-10:10 AM: Kelly DiPucchio – Bulldogs, Babies, and Bacon: Everyone Has a Story
In this humorous and enlightening presentation, Kelly shares 13 concrete ways to improve your picture book manuscript and your odds of being published traditionally.
10:10-10:20 AM: Break
10:20-11:10 AM: Lynne Rae Perkins – A Beginning, a Middle and an End; and Something Has to Happen
If you already know that your story needs these basic elements, then you are ahead of where I started. Twenty-two years ago this October, I got my big break at a regional SCBWI conference in Pittsburgh, PA. I could draw, and I was a reader, but I was a novice in the world of children’s books. Eight picture books and four novels later, I still feel like a novice at times, but I’ve learned a lot. I’ll share the practical info and less obviously practical ideas that have, so far, been the most helpful, interesting, encouraging, and fun. (Image by Lynne Rae Perkins)
10:20-11:10 AM: Ruth McNally Barshaw – Packing the Perfect Portfolio
We will analyze what works and what doesn’t in making your portfolio the best it can be for presenting illustrator work in the current children’s book industry. If you have one, bring your portfolio and your art. Bring any pieces you’re undecided on whether they’re strong enough for your portfolio.
11:15 AM – 12:05 PM: Kathleen Merz – Using Storytelling Techniques to Craft Narrative Nonfiction
How do writers tell engaging stories about real life? How can they capture a person’s life story in thirty-two pages? This presentation will look at the process of using general storytelling technique and sensibility to create well-crafted narrative nonfiction.
12:05-1:20 PM: Lunch / Bookstore / Tours of Thomson-Shore
1:20-2:20 PM: First Pages with Kathleen and Katherine
Busy editors have very limited time to read manuscripts. Some say the “make it or break it” window is thirty seconds per manuscript. During this session, editors Kathleen Merz and Katherine Jacobs will react to first pages of manuscripts read aloud. What makes it compelling? What is a turnoff? What does a first page need to make an editor want to keep reading?
2:20-3:10 PM: Deborah Diesen – Writing Stories in Rhyme: From Inspiration to First Draft in Fifteen Thousand Easy Steps. Debbie will discuss the process she uses to move from a picture book story idea to a rhyming first draft.
3:10-3:20 PM: Break
3:20-4:10 PM: Katherine Jacobs – The Body Electric: Creating Characters that Spark with Life
Learn how to create characters with rich inner lives, clear motivations, and problems that drive the plot. Look at examples and analyze why they work. Come away with concrete ways to make your characters into people readers long to know.
4:10-5:00 PM: Mary Bigler – Reading for the Love of It
Join Mary Bigler as she shares the joy and wonder of reading aloud to children. She will introduce books that will tickle their funny bones, light up their eyes, and touch their hearts. Joke books, poetry, picture books and nonfiction books will be shared. Think about your own school visits as Mary presents ideas on how you can engage children with good books and create a love of reading.
5:00-5:05 PM: Catherine Bieberich: Mentorship Program Winner Announcement!
5:05-5:15 PM: Closing Remarks and Awesome Prizes (including a full conference tuition!)
5:15-5:45 PM: Bookstore / Autograph Party
All adults and teens in grade 6 & up invited to learn about this nonprofit promotion (also known as NaNoWriMo) encouraging teens and adults to tackle the challenge of writing a 50,000-word novel by the end of November. Refreshments.
Benjamin Paloff will read from his second collection And His Orchestran.
Paloff grew up in Atlantic City and is a poetry editor at Boston Review. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, A Public Space, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and he writes frequently for such publications as The Nation and the Times Literary Supplement. The recipient of grants and fellowships from the US Fulbright Program and the National Endowment for the Arts, he is also the translator of several works from Central and Eastern European literatures. He teaches at the University of Michigan.
Eileen Pollack will read from her latest, The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still A Boys’ Club.
The Only Woman in the Room shows us the struggles women in the sciences have been hesitant to admit, and provides hope for changing attitudes and behaviors in ways that could bring far more women into fields in which even today they remain seriously underrepresented.
Eileen Pollack is a member of the MFA faculty of the Department of English at the University of Michigan. She is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Rabbi in the Attic, and a novel, Paradise, New York.
Local writers Rohn Federbush and Renci Denham read their spooky short stories included in this collection. Signing. For a mature audience.
Reading by Tarfia Faizullah, a U-M English lecturer whose 2014 collection Seam won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. The program begins with open mike readings.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including fiction writer Christin Lee and poet Amanda Rybin Koob.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State
Reading by Northwestern Michigan College (Traverse City) creative writing teacher Teresa Scollon, author of To Embroider the Ground with Prayer, a collection of poems that explore her father’s illness and death as well as the richness of family and community life in Michigan. The program begins with open mike readings.
Literati is proud to be the bookseller for “An Evening with Roz Chast” at Towsley Auditorium on the campus of Washtenaw Community College. New Yorker cartoonist and author Roz Chast discusses her new graphic novel, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, which gives a frank, funny account of caring for her aging parents.
Arrive early for a Senior and Caregiver Services Fair starting at 5pm!
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including fiction writer Cristina Crocker Escribano and poet Jenny Boychuk.
