Serious about improving your craft? SCBWI's regional events provide opportunities for professional growth and help you connect with a supportive, creative community.
Description: You already know: Working with a critique partner or group can help improve your creative projects! Incorporating useful feedback into your art or writing can make the difference in whether your work attracts attention from an agent, gets accepted by a publisher, or wins an award. The best critique environment is a supportive, collaborative, safe space. It sparks vulnerability, transparency, and creativity while offering feedback that builds up writers’ confidence—in their work and in themselves. Equally true: in partnerships or groups with diverse creators, it’s important to foster a welcoming environment for creators of differing identities or cultures—or whose work centers characters or nonfiction/fiction themes outside your lived experience. Building on her experience as a writing coach and as a sensitivity reader for publishers of adult and KidLit titles, Lisa A. Crayton will explore how critique partners (and groups) can better celebrate, uplift, and empower creators through community. She’ll address topics centering diversity—such as stereotypes, marginalization, and respect— as they relate to KidLit art and writing. Lisa will also offer tips for providing better written and verbal feedback. And she’ll address your pressing questions arising from real life experiences in critique environments. The webinar is for you if you struggle with giving honest feedback when offering critiques to another creator because of the material that includes cultures, identities and/or themes different from your lived experience. Or if you hold back your heart topics or projects in a critique group because of fear of receiving insensitive comments. Or if you simply are curious about how to build a more supportive critique group. A limited number of critiques available at an additional cost.
Join us for a day of curating your illustrator portfolio as we honor keynote speaker and local author-illustrator, Julie Fortenberry. Plus world-class presentations from invited faculty and add ons—an AD assignment, and portfolio reviews.
8 & Under is back! This half-day, virtual event is designed especially for writers and writer-illustrators who create for children ages 8 & Under. If you create board books, picture books, early readers, or chapter books, this is the event for you! The "full" 8 & Under event will include two faculty-led webinars plus a mini mentorship with a published author (one of Eastern PA’s PALs), complete with a written critique and an extended one-on-one virtual session. Agent/editor post-event critiques will be available for an additional fee. We are also offering the option to purchase "webinars-only" tickets, for those who are unable or do not wish to take part in the PAL mini-mentorship portion of the program. A limited number of agent/editor (post-event) critiques will be available to those who purchase a webinars-only ticket. Spaces are limited! See below for details and important dates.
For an additional fee, you can receive written feedback from a publishing industry professional on a sample of your work AFTER THE CONCLUSION of the 8 & Under live event. We have designed the program this way so that you will have the opportunity to incorporate what you learn from the webinars and your PAL mini mentorship (if you participate) to revise your manuscript before sending it to an agent or editor for a critique.
Description: What makes a scary picture book successful? There’s much more to a spooky tale than the fear factor. In this workshop, learn about the various elements of the horror genre and how to apply them to stories appropriate for younger audiences. We will analyze highly successful “horror” picture books as well as tips and tropes to craft a delightfully creepy picture book that will chill—and thrill—the hearts of littles and the adults who read to them.
SUBMISSION SHINE 2025: ONLINE CRITIQUE INTENSIVE PARTICIPANTS ARE AUTOMATICALLY REGISTERED FOR THIS EVENT!! Webinar Description: Join literary agent and former editor Elise Howard as she discusses the process of working with your agent on readying your work for submission. Topics to be covered will include: · What’s an editorial agent? · Submitting to an editorial agent · Finding the right editorial agent for you · Revising for submission · Ready for submission? · What exactly is “room for the editor”? · The agent’s role after the book is sold. After laying the groundwork for the subject, we will make the session as interactive as possible, in order to answer participants’ most pressing questions about the agent/author relationship and to help make your search for an agent, editorial or otherwise, as productive as possible.
Event Description: So, you have a handful of manuscripts or illustration styles ready to query. Which one should you lead with? Is your other work strong enough to hook an agent if they request to see more? And what will an agent think about the variety of work you bring? Whether you have multiple submission-ready picture book manuscripts, write across age categories, have a variety of illustration pieces and illustrated works, or a combination of all of the above, Submission Shine is an opportunity to talk with one agent about four submission-ready works AND your writing/illustrating career as a whole. Plus, a webinar to help center your understanding of the agent and editor relationships as you begin querying AND additional feedback from a peer critique group of other Submission Shine participants.
Webinar Description: Whether you are writing an epic fantasy with dynamic world building, a suspenseful thriller, a creepy horror, a dramatic family saga, a charming romance, or an otherworldly adventure, it is important to build characters who are complex and distinct. Each character has a backstory and personality that provides them with dimension, and that character's background should influence how they communicate and connect with others. In this workshop, we'll talk about the different ways we can enhance a character's voice through dialogue and other forms of communication. A limited number of MG & YA critiques are available at an additional cost.
The train to publication is all about onboarding. From industry professionals to gatekeepers, and from our readers to ourselves everyone needs to BELIEVE in our work. Whether you're just getting started or you're Published and Listed (PAL), gain steam for the journey at this year's retreat. We'll dig into our work in a way that builds faith in self and makes meaningful connections with others. All aboard!--as we make tracks to the Highlights Foundation.