MENTORSHIP AWARDS

Cynthia Leitich Smith Writing Mentor Award

Cynthia Leitich Smith is an inspiration not only as an award-winning and best-selling author, but also as a champion of children’s book writers. Cynthia also is an extremely generous member of the Austin kidlit community, offering up her time and knowledge to help fellow writers whenever she can. She embodies the kind of writer we all try to be.

The award bearing Cynthia’s name follows her example and gives guidance to up-and-coming writers. Inspired by the Houston SCBWI chapter‘s Joan Lowery Nixon Award, the Cynthia Leitich Smith Writing Mentor Award starts with the critiques at the annual Austin SCBWI conference. Critiquers nominate one of the manuscripts submitted to them for the award, if they feel the manuscript is of a high enough level. The nominated writers will make up the finalists, who will be announced in the Austin newsletter. The finalists’ work will then be submitted to the mentor, who will choose the winner, announced on our website after the conference.

This award is open to anyone doing a critique during the 2025 conference. This includes people attending 1-1 virtual or online no matter the style of critique.

This year we will be offering 2 mentorships, one for picture book authors and one for novelists. Our picture book mentor will be TBD and our novelist mentor will be TBD.