SCBWI summer conference

Days of learning, hanging out, talking, speaking. Old friends and new. This year SCBWI had a nonfiction strand, and I was on a panel with Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Tanya Lee Stone and Deborah Heiligman, chaired by Ken Wright from Writer's House. I also did two sessions: Writing Biographies, and Photo Research. I loved doing these two sessions! People came loaded with really good, specific questions, and wanted lots of practical advice. For more about the conference, check out the SCBWI blog that they kept running during the conference. Amazing.

As always, people are my favorite part. Here's a few photos. Dinner with M. T. Anderson one night. There must be some connection here to Feed....

The amazing and wonderful Linda Sue Park. If I ever write a novel half as beautiful as what she does, I will die happy.

Loren Long (left side) was one of the incredible speakers at the conference. At a Writer's House party Sunday night, David Shannon popped up out of nowhere, like an oversized elf with his mischievous grin. I didn't get my camera going till the grin was temporarily gone, and then a security guy swooped in and told me to stop taking photos.


And here is where we had the party, right across the street from the hotel. In fact, I took this photo right out my window the next morning. I think this building is so totally, utterly L. A. Inside were massive amounts of marble and floor to ceiling windows.



Been trying to get a good shot of Nikki Grimes and her beautiful jewelry. Aced it. Thanks, Nikki for a perfect moment!


And even in the middle of all the fun, an agent's work must go on. Ken Wright, checking in. I missed getting a shot of his quintessential L. A. moment: working by the pool, he emailed me news of a new contract. Then he fell asleep in the sun while I danced in my room.

Traveling writer: on the road again.

I'm just back from an amazing trip with two back-to-back talks.

First I went to talk to writers at Hamline University MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. The caliber of the students is incredible at this program. Lots of students have a book or two out, or are well on their way. I was able to hang with my editor, Jill Davis, who is there learning about being on the other side of the desk as a writer. Also lunch with Pete Hautman was terrific. We had a chance to catch up after not seeing each other since we both served on the National Book Award Committee a few years ago.

The professors at Hamline are incredible and give powerful, loaded lectures. If you are thinking about joining this program be prepared: they work their students (and profs) hard! Here I am with Gary Schmidt.



I gave a lecture on "How to Write Kick-Ass Nonfiction." Jacqueline Briggs Martin who teaches there did a really nice run-down of my talk on her blog. And yes, I did get all the way from kick-ass non-fiction to primordial energy. Made sense at the time.

Extra bonus: seeing my son Will in his lab and going for dinner afterward. He just got his Ph.D in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Minnesota.



Then on to Brigham Young University's Symposium on Books for Young Readers. I had a blast. The morning view from my hotel window! No wonder so many artists and photographers and climbers come here.


My minder, Annette Garner, who was fantastic. More mountains.



Our last evening together... below is a picture I took of a few of us (Laurie Halse Anderson, Patty MacLachlan, Glenna and Mike Tunnell, David Shannon) as close to paradise as you can get: Robert Redford's Resort.We drove up together in a van. I had no idea that Patricia MacLachlan is so funny. With David Shannon ripping it up alongside her, I just stared out at the spectacular scenery and laughed. The two of them traded White House storied that went like this: Patty: "George Bush asked me if I would like to sit down and I said, 'no, because I have a run in my stockings on my butt and if I sit down it will go all the way down.'" And David told us how he actually got Barbara to sign his Barbara Bush bobble head doll. (He had a little rogue help from the former Ambassador of Children's Literature, Jon S.)


DaNae Leu did a terrific run-down of the two days on her blog, The Librariest. She even brought me her Battle of the Books T-shirt to sign and took this modest photo of me:



And I thought this sign was so hysterical. It's for the last person in line at the bookstore signing....

Braiding the garlic

Here's the big mound of garlic plants we brought in from the garden. First we cleaned them all... getting dirt out of the roots, cutting off excess roots, stripping off the dead leaves. Then on to the braiding....
I've always loved people's hands. Writing, hammering, cooking, wrapped around a small child... just love watching people use their hands. Both Dorothea Lange and my dad photographed people's hands, so I guess I learned early to notice them. Felix started off the braids by picking three garlic plants and tying them together, then he would add new garlics as Sasha braided. He held tight to the heads so they would make a firm braid.

Flipped over to tie off.... and success! Now on to the next couple dozen. Sasha and Felix stayed up long after I'd gone to bed, braiding and tying.

Malcolm Gladwell, weekends in the apple orchard

I just watched an incredible interview with Malcolm Gladwell at the Guardian, UK. He's someone I admire tremendously for his ability to stand back and analyze the way things work. [The Tipping Point, and Outliers are two of his books.] He ends his interview talking about journalism and journalists: "The human need to be told stories is universal. We're like people growing food. What we do, there is always going to be this fantastic market for it."

Watch the interview with Gladwell by Sarfraz Manzoor here.

We've spent the last few weekends working in our garden/orchard. We put beet seeds in for a second time (it was too cold this spring for them to germinate), harvested fava beans, and dug up half the garlic, cleaned it up, and Sasha and Felix made garlic braids. Takes teamwork. We got the orchard mowed (again, all that rain made for lush grass and weeds) and thinned off many of the tiny apples on our young and tender trees so they will keep growing and not stop to put all their energy into fruit. Tom wheeling some of the garlic up to the house. Picking fava beans in my favorite new T-shirt. My dad getting the low hanging beans, with a little help from our dog.
Taking a break. And yes, my dad really does dress like this. Those are his old sixties ties he uses for suspenders.

My latest manuscript has been edited, re-edited, copy-edited and rewritten every one of those times by me. I love this stage of a book. It's this consuming sprint to the finish, lungs bursting, as every little bit is done just-one-more-time.

I'm also totally wrung out. I just can't seem to get my mind to think one more thought. I'd rather be outside watering, or watching the bees fly from flower to flower. When I'm inside, I do crazy tasks like clean out the pantry. Do the wash. Fold. Put away. Wash the dog. Sit on the back porch with the dog to both dry off. I've been wondering lately why I don't have a lounge chair in the back yard like other poeple do, so I could just lie down and do nothing. Read maybe, that would be the max.

Garlic braiding pictures tk.

Eggs and Awards

Two amazing things happened to me this morning:

1. Hen laid an egg right in my hand. (Yes, this requires patience. Lots.)

2. The Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards were announced. Marching for Freedom won for nonfiction.

Unlike waiting for an egg, which is a very solitary occupation (believe me, Hen wishes it were a little more solitary), winning an award like this is because many, many people worked incredibly hard to pull this book together. I thank the people whom I interviewed for their heartfelt stories, the photographers who took the photos, and all the people at Viking Children's Books.

Children's Literature New England: Secrets Told and Untold

It was a couple weeks ago, but I still have my hand-scrawled notes from the CLNE colloquy sitting right on my desk. I gave a talk on non-fiction, and helped roast our wonderful new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Katherine Patterson. My part was easy -- I did a riff off the outgoing Ambassador's recent open letter in the Hornbook to the new Ambassador. The roast was fun, and she was a very good sport about it. Here's a great interview with Patterson by Roger Sutton from several years ago.

Here's Peter Sis at dinner one night: not exactly shy. And I love a guy who'll wear checks. And a striped hoodie.

All the speakers at CLNE were terrific. But my notes are still humming and vibrating next to me because I want to share how amazing Ashley Bryan's presentation was. It was in the evening, and all the lights were turned down low, except at the podium. He recited, by heart, a group of poems. He'd put on his glasses, check the title of the next poem, whisk off his glasses, and sing/shout/whisper a poem. We heard the voices of wise old grannies, gleeful children and sad, gravelly-voiced old men. Ashlely's whole body was part of the poem as he reached and spun and swayed. Sometimes he'd ask us for "help" and draw us into being part of the poem as we recited refrains with him. He did more than forty poems, and what I remember is is love of the poetry, and his pleasure in making the poems fill the room and sweep us into their magic.

As we wrapped up the colloquy, Ashley put his love of poetry so eloquently: "When I read a poem," he said, "I am living it all again. The poems will make it of the moment again."

More photos from CLNE on facebook.com/elizabethpartridge

Good luck comes in threes, and IRA

This has been an unbelievable month. The Jane Addams Children's Book Awards were announced at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and guess what?

Marching for Freedom won for older children.

Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan won for younger children. The award honors "children’s books of literary and artistic merit that invite children to think deeply about peace, social justice, world community, and gender and racial equality." I can't imagine a more meaningful award. My deepest thanks to the Jane Addams committee, and congratulations to all awardees -- Jeanette Winter, Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney, George Ella Lyon & Stephanie Anderson, Tanya Lee Stone.

I had a blast at the International Reading Association meeting. A dinner with some funny and yet serious authors and librarians at Gibson's Steakhouse. One of those evenings where we each got up to speak for a few minutes, and somehow we started riffing off each other. Illustrator Loren Long had me totally in stitches with his deadpan delivery. "My wife likes to say I color all day," was followed moments later by "The Pokey Little Puppy wasn't just my book, it was my friend." Love it!

The next morning I was on a panel "The Illustrated Teen" with a group of awesome people: Holly Black, Henry Neff, Stephen Emond and Scott Westerfeld, all of our eclectic words and images woven together by Susanna Richards. This photo of mine looks boring, but it was spectacular. Scott writes steam punk which is one of my favorite words right now. Stephen and Henry are both amazing illustrators. I have to admit being a little jealous when Holly and Scott showed off fan art. How totally cool is it to write stuff that opens people's imagination so much that they draw what they see?

Lisa Yee has a great blog post up about how totally fun IRA is,. I went over and stole... um... borrowed this great picture of me with Arthur Levine and the redoubtable Peepy getting a free ride in Arthur's name tag pouch.

But here's the real reason it all goes smoothly: crazy hard work by the publishing people. Check out Emily Heddleson on the phone, moving books, helping a customer and SMILING! My hat's off to you all.