DATE: January 13, 2012 - January 15, 2012
CONTACT: Alice McGinty
CHAPTER: Illinois
LOCATION/TIME: January 13-15
NOT JUST THE FACTS, M'AM: HOW TO CRAFT GREAT NONFICTION AND HISTORICAL FICTION FOR PUBLICATION
Downstate Craft Retreat: Workshop with Candace Fleming
January 13-15, 2012
Friday evening program: Special Skype Speaker, To Be Announced
Saturday 9 a.m. - Sunday until 1 p.m.: Main Workshop with Candace Fleming
Where: Hawthorn Suites in Savoy, IL
Cost: $175 for SCBWI members and $190 for nonmembers if you register before November 18th. After November 18th, cost is $185 for members and $200 for
nonmembers.
This fee includes lunch and dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday. It does not include lodging. Group rates are available at Hawthorn Suites and free lodging is available with local SCBWI member hosts if requested.
Registration begins with postmarks of October 11. Registration closes on December 2.
Publication of nonfiction writing is HOT and growing in today's children's market. Candace Fleming will focus on how to write well-crafted nonfiction and historical fiction. She'll cover how to choose what facts to include in your manuscript, how much to leave out, and what to do with your facts, including writing in scenes and using techniques which she calls "leaping" (leaping over facts) and "clouding" (working facts into the narrative). She'll give examples from her own award-winning work - both her nonfiction and her historical fiction - and give us exercises to successfully learn the techniques she uses. Candace will also spend some time discussing research and organization.
Participants will be formed into MEG's (Manuscript Exchange Groups). A limited number of written manuscript critiques by Candace are available for an extra $35 each. Manuscripts for Candace's critique should be submitted by December 9.
To register, please contact Sara Latta at saralatta@sbcglobal.net.
*CANDACE FLEMING*
(www.candacefleming.com) awarded herself the Newbery Medal in fifth grade after scraping the gold sticker off the class copy of *The Witch of Blackbird Pond *and pasting it onto her first novel--a ten page, ten-chapter mystery titled *Who Done It? *She’s been collecting awards (her own, not Elizabeth George Speare’s) ever since. Today, she is the prolific and versatile author of more than twenty books for children, including *Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!* (Atheneum/Anne Schwartz Books, 2002), *Boxes for Katje *(FSG, 2003), *The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School* (Random House/Schwartz and Wade, 2007) and *The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary *(Random House/Schwartz and Wade, 2008). The modern classic *Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!* was named to the New York Public Library’s list of 100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know.
Candace is equally well-known as a meticulous researcher, who, with her long-time editor, Anne Schwartz, developed a scrapbook style of biographies that stand out for their generous display of archival photos and documents, as well as artful design techniques designed to evoke the era in which the subject lived. Candace won the 2009 Boston Globe-Horn Book award for Nonfiction for her biography of the Lincolns, which also was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Literary Book Prize in 2009. *The Great and Only Barnum: the Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P.T. Barnum *was nominated for the YALSA 2010 Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Candace’s most recent title, *Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart*, was released by RandomHouse in February. Two of her 2010 titles, *Clever Jack Takes the Cake *(PB) and *The Fabled Fifth Graders of Aesop Elementary School* (MG), were named Parents’ Choice Recommended Books.