Afternoon Workshops 2025

HOW: Bringing History to Life through Middle Grade Fiction

Join authors Heather B. Moore and Allison Hong Merrill as they discuss their research and co-writing process in creating the Young Readers Adaptation of The Paper Daughters of Chinatown. Heather and Allison will discuss contracts, collaborating on plot and character development, working on a deadline, marketing to educators and young readers, and why bringing history to life for young readers is a valuable endeavor.

HOWs (Hands-On Workshops) are 2-hour, more in-depth classes during the afternoon breakout hours. 

HOW: Advanced Query Letters

A great query letter is the key to attracting a potential agent, who can get your book into the hands of acquiring editors. In this advanced class, we will review a query letter from each student and look for ways to improve. Students will also learn about researching agents, how to find the best agent fit for your manuscript, the overall process of signing with an agent, and what to look for in an agency retainer agreement.

If you have a complete, polished manuscript and are ready to query agents, this class is for you. After registering for the class, you’ll receive information about sharing your query letter with the instructor.

Class caps at 12 participants. 

HOWs (Hands-On Workshops) are 2-hour, more in-depth classes during the afternoon breakout hours. 

Storming the Castle: How to Write Fantastic Finales and Compelling Conclusions

There are a lot of classes and conversations about the best way to start a story–but do you sometimes struggle with writing the end of your book? Do you worry your finale is lack–luster? Or maybe it’s too convoluted? Do you wonder how to make your conclusion compelling and satisfying without tying everything into a neat little bow? This class will discuss a five-point finale system that can be used to create fantastic endings to all your books. (Helpful for picture books, middle grade, YA, and beyond.)

How to Inject Humor into your Writing

In this session, we will talk about how to weave in the humorous, the ridiculous, the silly, the weird, and the occasional stray semi-colon to your writing. I joined the Lady Janies as, "The one who was supposed to be funny." (Jodi Meadows was the one who did the fantasy and world-building. Cynthia Hand was the one who did the research. She was also the one who bought the merchandise. (I'm talking bonnets, and hand-knit shawls. (These things did make our readings that much funnier.) Oh dear. I'm in a quagmire of parentheses. I believe two will get me out of here.)) Phew. 
So when it came to the three of us writing My Plain Jane (a retelling of Jane Eyre), it was my turn to write Jane Eyre's character.  She was 100% Emo before Emo was a thing. The corset she wore not only bound her chest, but it bound her spirit, as most Victorian fashion was meant to do.

How to make it funny? I'm glad you asked. I will talk about using humor (and parentheses) to comment on society, to say the quiet part out loud, and simply to entertain.

Plenary: The Book of Your Heart

The story of your heart: we all have one. That story that feels impossible to write. How do we do we get it on paper? I don't know. But let's try together. 

(Bring the idea for the story of your heart.)

What's Behind the Door: Using page turns in picture books

In a picture book, a page turn is the crucial drumbeat of time that can:

•Invoke time passing

•Or drive up suspense or...

•Deliver a punchline!

In this session, we'll investigate the magic of page turns and play some creative games to amp up the energy in our picture book projects.

Drawing Words and Writing Pictures: Thinking visually in picture books

Picture book writers train their brains to think visually, because the story language is a combination of both words and pictures. In this session, we'll explore the way that words and pictures work together to make picture books; and we'll do fun drills and exercises to train your brain to think visually, even if you're a writer who doesn't illustrate.

Gaining Perspective: Some thoughts on POV

Editors will tell you that two characteristics of a novel keep readers coming back to the same author for more: voice and character. The success of both voice and character hinge on perspective—who’s telling the story and in what point of view. That’s what this workshop is all about, making choices about who gets to tell your story and how they tell it. 

“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” ― Flannery O'Connor

HOW: Bringing History to Life through Middle Grade Fiction

Join authors Heather B. Moore and Allison Hong Merrill as they discuss their research and co-writing process in creating the Young Readers Adaptation of The Paper Daughters of Chinatown. Heather and Allison will discuss contracts, collaborating on plot and character development, working on a deadline, marketing to educators and young readers, and why bringing history to life for young readers is a valuable endeavor.

HOWs (Hands-On Workshops) are 2-hour, more in-depth classes during the afternoon breakout hours. 

Crafting Clean Fiction that Captivates for ANY Genre.

Unlock the magic of clean storytelling! In this lively class, we’ll discuss how to craft swoon-worthy romances, nail-biting conflicts, and unforgettable characters—all while keeping it clean and captivating. Packed with hands-on exercises and insider tips, this class will show you how to hook readers with vivid worlds, relatable emotions, and timeless themes. Whether you're looking to expand your audience or sharpen your skills, this course will leave you inspired to create stories that charm, delight, and linger in readers' hearts.

Plot Twists & Character Quirks: Crafting Stories That Stick

Discover how to create unforgettable characters and jaw-dropping plot twists. Through engaging activities, you’ll learn to develop unique traits for your characters, begin to master the art of surprising your readers, and have a little fun in the process.

Class description coming soon!

Class description coming soon!

Writing Flawed vs. Abusive Characters and Why It Matters

If your characters are too perfect, no one can relate with them. But if you go too far with your character’s flaws, you can accidentally enable and perpetuate abusive characteristics. In this class, we’ll look at why writing flawed characters is important, how to implement flaws in your characters that are essential to the lifeblood of the story, and how to differentiate flawed characters from abusive ones responsibly for your readers.

How to Not Accidentally Undermine Your Theme

A properly executed theme separates the good stories from the great ones. So how do you deliver an important theme without falling into the trap of preaching platitudes, creating a rigid argument that doesn’t feel authentic, or being so wish washy that your story accidentally undermines your theme altogether? In this class, we'll break down the essential principles of a well-delivered theme, the importance of evaluating thematic depth and tone, and evaluating the consequences of your premise with authenticity to deliver a theme that is well-explored and still filled with your conviction as an author.

Plotting Our Author Career: Thinking About Branding As an Aspiring Author

As aspiring authors, we put a lot of time into plotting our novels in some form or another (yes, even us pantsers). We want our books to be ready for the big shiny goal: publication! But when we cross over from “aspiring author” to “published author,” have we spent any time “plotting” our author careers? When we publish, we’ll become business owners who need to build a platform, create a brand, and try to SELL that book we want the world to read. In this class, we’re going to talk about how building a brand and learning some marketing skills before your first book launch can take the pressure off, give you time to learn new skills, shift your mindset about the career ahead of you, and even be a lot of fun.

Plenary: To the Edge of Competence: How You (and Your Characters) Can Grow

As humans, we like to settle into our comfort zones in life and in our writing. But the comfort zone is no place for growth. When progress needs to happen, pushing to the edge of competence is the only way. Learn what that means for yourself as a writer of books for kids and the characters you are building. Connection to your young reader happens at the edge.

Query Letter to Publication from Both Sides

Kiri Jorgensen and Susan Phelan discuss publication from the views of both the publisher and the writer. Kiri is the publisher behind Chicken Scratch Books and Susan Phelan’s novel, Miss Classified, was published with them in 2022.

Mastering the Read-Aloud: Fun with Picture Book Wordplay

Picture book writers have a wealth of tools at their fingertips—alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, refrains, onomatopoeia, repetition, and more. In this workshop, we’ll experiment with these literary devices to infuse our stories with lively, read-aloud magic. Join us for a playful, hands-on session where we’ll tinker with words and craft the foundation of an irresistible picture book manuscript. Let’s spark creativity and bring your story to life!

Class description coming soon!

“Be a Poet Even in Prose”: Eleven Techniques for Writing Jaw-dropping Sentences

Beginners sometimes focus too much on plot and character and genre expectations. By contrast, our best writers, including authors as diverse as Ursula Le Guin, Karen Russell, E.B. White, and Cormac McCarthy, have mastered those pesky building-block thingies called sentences, and in the process taken their craft to a whole new level. In this session, we’ll focus on what will set your work apart from the slush pile and allow you to leave your fingerprint on everything you write.

HOW: Say What? How to Make Your Dialogue Meaningful

Characters in books don't talk like people in real life—but should they? This class will offer a deep dive int the do's and don'ts of dialogue to help writers craft compelling conversations that drive plot, learn how to create tension through the careful use of questions, and write banter between friends, enemies, and lovers. We will also touch on the importance of "author voice" and "character voice" that can help your story speak to your reader's heart.

PLENARY: The Princess Bride: Ten Things I Learned

The Princess Bride was published right around the time I began to dream of being a writer. It became a mentor text to me before I knew what a mentor text was. In this lecture I’ll share ten basic things it taught me about writing that have been important to my work.

Portraying Character Emotion

When a reader finishes one of my books, what I really want is for them to close it and press it to their hearts for a moment. I want them to feel all the joy or sorrow or fear or wonder that my character is feeling. Years of teaching writing has made me think deeply about ways to get our readers to empathize and fully engage with the feelings and fates of our characters. In this class we’ll talk about the best and the worst ways to get emotion down on the page. You may wish to bring to class an emotional passage from your work in progress, and see if it can become even more powerful.

PLENARY: From Query Letter to Pub Date - How the author-agent relationship develops

Approaching an agent can be an intimidating experience as you struggle to emerge from anonymity while trying to avoid unprofessional behavior. Yet sometime between the thrill of finally landing an agent and the long haul of seeking a publishing deal, followed by eventual publication, the author-agent experience will change. Relationships between authors and agents may be strictly formal, or they may range from mentoring situations to actual friendships. Figure out what to expect from your agent and how to develop the type of relationship that suits your personal needs and those of your career.

Hot and Cold – How to control POV in your fiction

First person, third person limited, omniscient? Should your story have one main character, or multiple POVs throughout, and how do you determine which character should be telling your story in any given scene?

Learn how to warm up your narrative to avoid the chilling effect of POV filtering, as well as other techniques to master the art of POV.

HOW: The Mechanics of Writing for Young Readers

Being comfortable with the basics of writing mechanics is essential for any author, but it is especially important when writing books for younger audiences. During this HOW workshop, agent and editor Michelle Witte will help writers understand writing essentials like punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, and more. She'll also point out some of the most common errors she sees in manuscripts, and then demonstrate how to avoid them.

HOWs (Hands-On Workshops) are 2-hour, in-depth classes during the afternoon breakout hours. 

Exploring the Graphic Novel as a Medium

In recent years, graphic novels have taken publishing by storm: they’ve grown a whopping 65% this last year alone! Lots of authors, especially in kid lit, are interested in dipping their toes into writing graphic novels, but if you aren’t an artist, where do you start? In this intensive, we’ll break down the pillars of sequential storytelling and the nuances of collaborating with an artist or art team to bring a story to life in a way only graphic novels can. We’ll explore the nearly endless limits of the versatile format while also learning about current trends and standards in the industry. Beyond understanding the mechanics of writing a comic script, students will also come away with a basic understanding of what self-publishing, working with a small press, or working with a traditional publisher is like for graphic novel authors. This workshop is aimed for beginners and intermediates of all backgrounds who want to explore the graphic novel as a medium – whether writers, illustrators, storytellers, or all of the above.

Everything I Wish I'd Known: 6 Things I Needed Before My Book Got Accepted

There's plenty of advice out there on how to get published. Most of that advice comes with a fancy title like this class does. Most of it feels the same after a while, and you're still wondering how you can get accepted by a publisher.

Sound familiar?

Yeah. I've been there, too.

In this class, we'll talk about the six things that changed everything for me in getting published—things I'd never heard about and had to learn on my own before that magical "yes." We'll also delve into generating incredible story ideas without breaking your brain. Bring something to write with, we're going to have fun.

There will be homemade candy and a baby penguin. Everyone wins.

Love at First Read: Six Elements for an Effective Opening

Readers often decide whether or not to keep reading a book within a few pages; many agents report deciding after only a paragraph or two. Your story needs to hook readers from the opening page--but what are some effective ways to do that? This presentation explores six elements that can work together to create a powerful opening: hook, promises, questions, character, setting, and situation.

HOW to Set Realistic Expectations for Publishing Success

Discover what it takes to succeed as an author. Learn how to break into the industry, navigate financial realities, manage publisher relationships, and set achievable goals. From writing expectations to submissions to book launches to the hard truths of sales and rejections, this class will give you the tools to thrive in your writing career. 

This class caps at 20 participants. 

HOWs (Hands-On Workshops) are 2-hour, in-depth classes during the afternoon breakout hours. 

Class description coming soon!

Night Terrors: Why Horror for Kids is Important and How to Write it

Blurb: We’ve all experienced the feeling of waking up in a cold sweat. We know what it’s like to be afraid of what lurks in the shadows, and the monsters under the bed. The horror genre, especially horror for kids, is all about shining a light on those dark places, and facing the monsters directly. So how do you write a successful middle grade horror story? What can you include, and what can you not? Did you know that spooky middle grade is having a boom moment? We will examine some key mentor texts to learn how we can write our own middle grade horror. We will learn how horror is vital for kids not because it tells us monsters are real, but because it tells us they can be beaten.

Rejecting Rejection

Rejection is an unavoidable part of writing for publication. No matter how well you write or how good your stories are, or even how many times you've been published, you're going to face rejection. In this session, we'll talk about how to stay motivated and keep battling for that "yes" when you keep hearing "no."

Capturing Serendipity: Being in the right place at the right time to write the right thing

The definition of serendipity is “The faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” Ideas for picture books are all around us but usually they come when least expected. Some healthy writing habits to help you find what you’re not even looking for. And what you can do when you find them.

The Five Biggest Worldbuilding Mistakes I See as an Editor

No matter whether you're a new writer or an experienced one, there are some worldbuilding mistakes that everyone stumbles into from time to time, and it's your editor's job as your first professional reader to help you see where the gaps are. Join Lee & Low Books editor-at-large Stacy Whitman to discuss common missteps and how to see them (and when to know you can break the rules).

Query Letter to Publication from Both Sides

Kiri Jorgensen and Susan Phelan discuss publication from the views of both the publisher and the writer. Kiri is the publisher behind Chicken Scratch Books and Susan Phelan’s novel, Miss Classified, was published with them in 2022.

PLENARY: Keep Your Eyes on the Sparrow: Holding on to Your Writing Dream When Everyone, Including You, Says You Should Quit

Writing is hard.  Getting published is harder.  This presentation will help you stay in the writing game even and especially when everything seems to indicate you should surrender the Dream.

The Power of a Writing Sprint

Want to find motivation to write? Only 20 minutes and a timer will help you tackle the writer’s block and self-doubt. This class will give you tools to help you create and stay focused. Writing takes practice and these simple exercises can help strengthen your author muscle. 

Class description coming soon!

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Why Writing Isn't Like Math

Moseying around inside the author's head with her informal, personal, not-substantiated-by-proof "rules." Your results may vary.