Banned Books Week is September 27 through October 4

(September 29, 2008)
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2008 Sue Alexander Award Announced

Selected from manuscripts submitted for individual critique at the SCBWI Annual Summer Conference in Los Angeles, the Sue Alexander Most Promising New Work Award is given to the manuscript deemed most promising for publication. Critiquers at the Los Angeles conference determine the finalists. Until her sudden death in July 2008, Ms. Alexander made the final selection. Now, a three-member panel from Sue's writing group of 20 years makes a final selection after the conference.

2008 Winner
Doug Marshall for his manuscript Flung.

2008 Runners Up

• Sara Etienne,   The Harbinger
• Ellen Reagan,  Gifts of the Forgotten Goddess
• Matthew Kirby,  The Clockmaker's Grimoire

The winner receives an expense-paid trip to New York to meet with interested editors. Only manuscripts submitted for conference manuscript critiques by full-time conference attendees are eligible; see deadline and submission guidelines in the conference brochure or online, available in mid-May. There is no prior application process for this award.

(September 29, 2008)
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2008 SCBWI Work-In-Progress Grants Announced
Nearly 400 entries were received for this year’s Work-in-Progress Grants. Winning grants are for $1,500. Runner-up grants are for $500. Our thanks to the judges and first readers and our congratulations to the winners.

General Fiction
Judges: Frank Sloan (author, SCBWI Board of Advisors), Victoria Rock (Chronicle Books), Darcy Pattison (author).

Tiffany Trent of Radford, Virginia was this year’s winner. Her novel, The Fossil Raiders, a fantasy set in Victorian London, follows sixteen-year-old Syms Covington and his hopes of joining Charles Darwin on board the HMS Beagle.

Tamara Ellis Smith of Richmond, Vermont was selected as Runner-Up. Her middle grade novel, A Marble Looks Like Home, is set in New Orleans, Louisiana, during Hurricane Katrina and in Underhill, Vermont, where a boy grieves over the recent death of his best friend.

Contemporary Novel
Judges: Walter Dean Myers (author, SCBWI Board of Advisors), Donna Bray (Hyperion Books), Richard W. Jennings (author).

This year’s winner is Natalie Rompella of Elgin, Illinois. Her novel, No More White Bears, is about 12-year-old Ana, a sixth grader with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, who is uprooted from her suburban Chicago home when her family moves to Alaska. 

Runner-Up went to Tara Nickerson of Cotuit, Massachusetts, whose novel, Mercury in Retrograde, concerns headstrong Jeep who is struggling to deal with her parents’ dissolving marriage, her best friend’s problems with her older brother, and the most popular girl in the seventh grade.

Nonfiction Research
Judges: James Cross Giblin (author, SCBWI Board of Advisors), Reka Simonsen (Henry Holt), Mel Boring (author).

 Mary Cronk Farrell of Spokane, Washington is this year’s winner. Her project, Angel on the Picket Line, is a biography of labor organizer Fannie Sellins, who rose from garment industry worker to organizer for the United Mine Workers of America.

Runner-Up, Linda A. Odum of Concord, New Hampshire, is recognized for The History Kitchen, a nonfiction book for children eight to twelve that tells the story behind kids' favorite foods, linking each to events in World and United States history.

Unpublished Writer
Judges: Melissa Stewart (SCBWI Board of Advisors), Catherine Frank (Viking Press), Julie Anne Peters (author).

Stephanie Bearce of St. Charles, Missouri was chosen as this year’s winner for her book, Maddie’s Miracle, which explores 11-year-old Maddie Sommers’ discovery that her mother has not been entirely truthful about her birth name, nor the whereabouts of family members.

Sally An Apokedak of Marietta, Georgia was chosen as Runner-Up for The Kisses of the Enemy, a YA fantasy about 16-year-old Repentance Atwater, a low-born slave who discovers she has the mark of royalty.

Letters of Merit:

• Lydia Bobro Allen, Chagrin Falls OH (General)
• Swati Avasthi, Minneapolis MN (Unpublished Writer)
• Michele Barker, East Longmeadow MA (General)
• Barrie Bartlett, Seattle WA (Nonfiction Research)
• Molly Blaisdell, Woodinville WA (Contemporary Novel)
• Bill Cairns, Ottawa IL (General)
• Kirsten Cappy, Portland ME (Unpublished Writer)
• Michele Ivy Davis, Palm Harbor FL (General)
• Pamela M. Ehrenberg, Washington DC (General)
• April J. Gaff, Cedar Falls IA (Nonfiction Research)
• Amy Hansen, Greenbelt MD (Nonfiction Research)
• Valerie Battle Kienzle, St. Charles MO (Nonfiction Research)
• Jennifer Kramer, Marietta CA (Nonfiction Research)
• Robert Dale Kuntz, Parma Oh (General)
• Andrea McAfee, El Sobrante CA (Contemporary Novel)
• Carmella Marino, Naperville IL (Nonfiction Research)
• Sharon Mentyka, Seattle WA (Contemporary Novel)
• Barbara Rosenstock, Vernon Hills IL (Nonfiction Research)
• Jan Sherbin, Cincinnati OH (Unpubished Writer)
• Sarah Tomp, San Diego CA (Contemporary Novel)
• Lucia Zimmitti, South Glastonbury CT (Contemporary Novel)

Applications for the 2009 grants are available by sending an SASE to the SCBWI office, by checking the grants section on the SCBWI website, or by emailing scbwi@scbwi.org after the first of October. Everyone in the SCBWI, except for past winners is eligible to apply.

(September 24, 2008)
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2008 Market Survey Available Online!

The 2008 Market Survey of Publishers of Books For Young People was released at the recent SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles. To access the information in this year's Market Survey instantly, please visit the "For Our Members" section of the site, then click on "SCBWI Publications" and scroll down to "Market Surveys."

(August 6, 2008)
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Sue Alexander: Author, Mentor, Friend

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Sue Alexander, 1934 - 2008

Sue Alexander, SCBWI’s first member, longtime Chair of the SCBWI’s Board of Advisors, mentor to hundreds of aspiring authors and illustrators, author of more than twenty-five books for children, recipient of numerous awards, and a dedicated advocate for literacy, authors and illustrators and the SCBWI, died suddenly, July 3, at her home in West Hills, California. She was 74.

Sue Alexander was born in Tucson, but moved to Chicago at an early age. There she developed into an avid reader and storyteller, later incorporating her experiences into some of her books including Lila on the Landing (1987) and Sara’s City (1995). In the late 1960’s she began publishing in children’s magazines, though only after acquiring hundreds of rejections. When her daughter asked for some skits to perform at school the result was her first book, Small Plays For You and a Friend (Scholastic, 1973).

This first book came shortly after she had become a charter member of the SCBWI. “Three days after joining the then SCBW, Sue called me and Lin,” recalled SCBWI President, Stephen Mooser. “How can I help? she asked. And for more than 35 years that’s what she did, joyfully and selflessly.”

“There was hardly a part of the SCBWI that Sue didn’t play a part in,” remembers, SCBWI Executive Director Lin Oliver. “She helped create the Golden Kite Award. Served for nearly thirty years as SCBWI Board of Advisor’s Chair, even ran the SCBWI office for a while. And, of course she is the namesake of the Sue Alexander Award, given each year to a promising manuscript at the Summer Conference. Personally and professionally we have all lost an irreplaceable friend. ”

As an author she primarily wrote lyrical, perfectly-crafted picture books including Nadia The Willful (1983), World Famous Muriel (1984) and Behold The Trees (2001). In 1980 she received the Dorothy C. McKenzie Award from the Southern California Council of Literature for Children and Young People for distinguished contribution to the field of children’s literature. Among her other awards was the Child Study Association’s Children’s Book of the Year for Nadia the Willful, the story of a young Bedouin who disobeys her father’s command not to mention the death of his lost son. As Nadia finds people with whom to talk about Hamed, she keeps his memory alive and her father ultimately learns that no one is dead if they are not forgotten.

The SCBWI has received an outpouring of remembrances from those who Sue touched, through her work with the SCBWI, her personal relationships and through her writing. One of her oldest friends, author Rita Berman Frischer, best summed up the way all of us at the SCBWI feel about this extraordinary individual, Sue Alexander. Rita wrote, “Her memory will be a blessing. Like Nadia, I will speak of her and will remember.”

(July 23, 2008)
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