SCBWI-NM Craft and Career Webinar Series

Build Your Brand Before the Book teaches creators how to stop waiting and start moving. Using Ebony’s signature DDDPPP method, this course helps you set a clear vision for your career and focus on what you can control before an agent, deal, or bestseller arrives. You will learn how to identify your unique market value and audience, then turn them into a strategic, authentic brand. Ebony shares how this approach transformed her own career and opened doors early. The result is confidence, momentum, and visibility. You leave with clarity, action steps, and a brand that supports your books before publication.

Ebony Lynn Mudd is a world builder, movement maker, and literary activist who believes every child deserves to see themselves as the hero of the story. Her debut picture book, Just Like Tina: Inspired by the Life of Tina Turner, arrives January 27, 2026, and was exclusively announced by People Magazine. In 2025, Ebony was featured as a guest on the Jennifer Hudson Show. With six additional children’s book projects in development, she continues to create joyful, stereotype-busting stories. She teaches five-star picture book revision courses through The PB Retreat, highly recommended by students and senior editor Melissa Manlove.

In this workshop, author Danielle Herzog explores how meaningful conflict drives compelling storytelling. Participants learn to identify internal and external conflicts, raise stakes, and build tension that keeps readers engaged. Through guided exercises, writers practice transforming character struggles into powerful narrative momentum. We’ll examine examples of effective conflict, discuss common pitfalls, and explore techniques for deepening emotional impact. By the end of the session, attendees will understand how to craft purposeful conflict that shapes character arcs, enriches plot, and strengthens overall story structure. This webinar will be recorded and will remain available to registered attendees for 30 days following the event.

Danielle Herzog works in education by day and is an author, freelance writer, speaker, mother, and member of a large Italian family by night. She grew up with cheek-pinching aunts, face-slapping uncles, and cousins named after The Godfather characters. She's the author of the picture book, What Are You, Lou? and the middle-grade novel, The Cassette Tape Secret. She’s published widely on parenting, style, books, education, and mental health in outlets including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The Huffington Post.

Grow your author business exponentially by working smarter, not harder. Your book is out! Now, what once was your greatest dream suddenly feels like your biggest nightmare. A proven three-step interconnected marketing system teaches debut authors—and seasoned authors, too!—how to grow their businesses exponentially with the least amount of work. Let's work smarter, not harder, authorpreneurs! This webinar will be recorded and will remain available to registered attendees for 30 days following the event.

Sara Fujimura started as a journalist, so it is no surprise that Sara’s YA books contain a lot of facts to go along with the fiction. Whether you want to know about Japan (TANABATA WISH), the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 (BREATHE), what it’s like to be an Olympic-caliber skater (EVERY REASON WE SHOULDN’T), or how unscripted television works (FAKING REALITY), Sara takes readers on swoony journeys to unusual places. She was the Tempe Library’s Writer in Residence and has taught workshops for schools, libraries, and writer organizations. EVERY REASON WE SHOULDN’T was named an NPR Best Book of 2020.

Not the typical fill-out-this-character-sheet class! Explore Core Wounds, Key Strengths as they come from Trauma, Verbs, and Imagery Sets. You’ll finish with over a dozen different directions to explore your characters. Some techniques naturally lead to more plot, others inform the setting, and each makes your book rich with emotional resonance. Join USA Today Bestseller Jade Lee in her Master’s Class in Characterization and get the character solutions you need to bring your people to life. This webinar will be recorded and available to registered attendees for 30 days following the event.

USA Today Bestseller, JADE LEE has been scripting love stories since she first picked up a set of paper dolls. Ball gowns and rakish lords were her first loves which naturally led her to the world of regency romance. She has a gift for creating a lively world, witty dialogue, and hot, sexy humor. Don’t miss her exotic China series starting with Vixen. And if you know anyone with children, her Kat Chen PLAY WITH ME picture book has received a starred School Library Journal review and sold over a million copies!

Join author-illustrator Marker Snyder for an illustrator-centered workshop. This webinar will be recorded and available to registered attendees for 30 days following the event.

Marker Snyder is an illustrator, designer, and graphic artist currently based in Kingston, NY, where he lives in a rainbow house with his husband, two cats, and a very friendly turtle. Formerly a curator and exhibition designer in NYC, he now works primarily on developing illustrated projects for kids—from picture books through middle grade. Visit him online at www.drawingwithmarker.com

Once you've written a draft, it can be difficult to figure out where to go next. A range of people will provide feedback, but who is right? How do you go about discerning what to edit and what to keep the same? To effectively edit, it’s critical to identify a novel’s underlying argument—it’s heart. In this workshop, we’ll discuss the “thesis statement” approach to editing, looking at examples of novels’ “thesis statements,” as well as providing exercises to help you identify and hone in on your novel’s thesis. This webinar will be recorded and available to registered attendees for 30 days following the event.

Meg Eden Kuyatt is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” and the forthcoming “obsolete hill” (Fernwood Press, 2026) and children’s novels including the Schneider Family Book Award Honor-winning “Good Different,” “The Girl in the Walls” and “Perfect Enough,” all with Scholastic. When she isn’t writing, she teaches creative writing students. Find her online at megedenbooks.com.

Story openings have a big job — they entice your reader to continue reading. But what’s the best way to get readers’ attention? Dialogue? Backstory? Setting? Character sketch? Bring a novel opening or short story you’re having trouble with or would like to re-envision…and get ready to revamp! We’ll examine various story openings across MG/YA genres to spark ideas and understand how different styles can change a piece. You’ll see how your reimagined intros can alter tone, point of view, pace, and more. This webinar will be recorded and available to registered attendees for 30 days following the event.

Tina Tocco is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in Highlights, Highlights High Five, Cricket, Humpty Dumpty, AppleSeeds, Odyssey, Pockets, and other children’s publications. She is the author of the children’s poetry collection The Hungry Snowman and Other Poems (Kelsay Books, 2019). Her story “The Unknown Soldier” represents New York in the SCBWI’s horror anthology The Haunted States of America (Godwin Books, 2024). Tina has taught MG/YA workshops for various organizations, including GrubStreet, Hugo House, The Loft, and the SCBWI. She earned her MFA from Manhattanville University, where she was editor-in-chief of Inkwell, the university’s national literary journal.

As an MFA Playwright, Amy Fellner Dominy learned how to write smooth and natural dialogue for the stage. Those same writing principles can help writers avoid many of the common pitfalls of dialogue and create dialogue that will come to life on the page. Amy will break down the elements of dialogue and present actionable tips for attendees to improve their scenes. This webinar will be recorded and available to registered attendees for 30 days following the event.

Amy is an MFA playwright and the award-winning author of 11 books for children including young adult, middle grade, and picture books. Amy has taught workshops through SCBWI and has completed two library residencies where she presented workshops and met with patrons on writing projects. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her husband, a cat who thinks she’s a dog and a dog who rarely thinks at all.

Alice McGinty has spent the last 12 years successfully supporting herself as a writer through her writing camp, school visits, presentations, educational writing, book sales, writing coaching, tutoring, online writing workshops, and book reviews. While everyone’s journey and goals vary, in this presentation McGinty will cover techniques everyone can apply. These include: Bread and butter (generating income you can count on), trajectory (setting a path), setting a minimum wage, thinking of yourself as a business person (setting financial and business goals, self presentation), and reaching (marketing, generating new ideas, growing as a writer). This webinar will be recorded and available to registered attendees for 30 days after the event.

Alice B. McGinty is the award-winning author of over 50 picture books, founder of Words on Fire Writing Camp for Teens, a frequent presenter, writing coach, Regional Advisor Emerita of Illinois SCBWI, and recipient of the Prairie State Award for Excellence in Writing for Children. Her books include 2023 Irma S. Black Gold Medalist/New York and Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2022 Bathe the Cat, 2021 ALA Notable Book/JLG Selection/Norman A. Sugarman Honor Book, The Water Lady: How Darlene Arviso Helps a Thirsty Navajo Nation, and 2019 JLG Selection, The Girl Who Named Pluto: The Story of Venetia Burney.

Picture books are meant to be read aloud and successful ones frequently sound like a song. Join author Debra Kempf Shumaker for a session on lyrical language techniques that help picture book texts sing. She will cover poetic techniques that include sound devices (alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, and repetition) and figurative language (simile, metaphor, and imagery.) Debra will share the strategies and tools she used when writing her nonfiction rhyming picture books FREAKY, FUNKY FISH and PECULIAR PRIMATES, and her lyrical ode to the wind, WIND IS A DANCE, which was named a 2025 NCTE Notable Book of Poetry.

A picture book is more than words and pictures on pages — it is a physical object, a literary “tiny house” where every inch counts. This intensive workshop invites writers to see the picture book as a space to be designed, not just a manuscript to be written. We’ll explore the narrative possibilities of physical elements like trim, page turns, paratext, and especially the overlooked gutter. Drawing on examples from Suzy Lee, Isabel Minhós Martins, and others, we’ll uncover how physical form deepens story. Writers will leave with tools to approach their manuscripts as crafted objects alive with possibility.

From the first line to the last word, learn techniques for plotting out your picture book. We will discuss tips on how to leave room for an illustrator, and find ways to choose the most irresistible words. Editing our stories can be hard and at times, it can seem impossible! Look at quick and painless methods to “Delete and Retreat” without ruining your masterpiece. We will combat mundane middles and everyday endings to equip you with what you need to polish off your picture book. Feel free to bring your current picture book work in progress.