Category: Young Adult

Confessions of a Conference Pusher

7/7/2014

Guest Post By Shirin Yim Bridges
MCWC Faculty 2011 and 2013, MCWC Advisory Board Member

Author of Ruby's Wish, one of Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2002 and winner of the 2003 Ezra Jack Keats award; The Umbrella Queen, named one of the Best Children's Books of 2008 by TIME magazine; the forthcoming Mary Wrightly So Politely; and The Thinking Girl's Treasury of Real Princesses. All her books are about girls who manage to exert themselves and do the unexpected.

My sister, Natasha Yim, is a self-proclaimed conference junkie. By which she means if there’s a writers’ conference, she’ll try to find the funds to attend. She usually gets to at least one a year (she’s a MCWC alum), and sometimes as many as three. It was at a writers’ conference that she found a publisher for her most recent book, Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas. Similarly, she met her agent beside a swimming pool at a social event.

I am a conference pusher. Whenever I teach or speak about writing and publishing, I tell anyone who will listen that conferences are the only short cut left to getting published by someone other than yourself. But is this true? I subject my oft-repeated assertion to closer scrutiny in my blog at goosetracks.me.

Conferences are how the book industry does business. In addition to the writers’ conferences, there are the booksellers’ conferences (BEA being the largest one in the U.S., usually held in New York), and the library conferences (the behemoth being ALA). As an author, publisher, and speaker, I attend on average eight to twelve conferences a year.

That many conferences does not a happy camper make. I’ve just returned from this year’s ALA National Conference in Las Vegas. It was a very successful conference for Goosebottom Books, at which we introduced our new series, A Treasury of Glorious Goddesses.

But my back and legs still ache from four days of standing. My brain is exhausted from constantly being ON. I’d like to say the 108˚ weather and infrequent meals (try walking away from a booth to get fed when there are 13,000 attendees!) have made me newly svelte, but no such luck.

There’s one conference that I look forward to every year though: the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. It has everything that I tell my students conferences offer: the opportunity to improve your craft; the opportunity to meet other authors like yourself; the golden chance to put your manuscript in front of agents, editors, and publishers.

And it has something that I value even more—community.

You’ll see what I mean when you get there. As you watch shy newcomers being greeted by the million-watt smiles of board members; as you see conference regulars embrace each other as at a reunion; as faculty shake hands and slap each other on the back, and turning, include you too; listen out for Louis Armstrong:

I see friends shaking hands
saying how do you do.
They’re really saying...

Yes, it’s a wonderful world.

Shirin Yim Bridges

Only an invitation to speak at the SCBWI East Australia and New Zealand Conference in Sydney, Australia, prevents her from joining the MCWC community this year.

Why I write YA

6/30/2014

Guest Post by Malin Alegria
MCWC Presenter 2014

Malin Alegria is the author of Estrella’s Quinceañera and Sofi Mendoza’s Guide to Getting Lost in Mexico (Simon & Schuster 2006 & 2007) and the YA teen series Border Town (Scholastic, 2012). She lives in San Jose, CA.

MCWC 2014 Workshop

Middle Grade/Young Adult

with Malin Alegria

"First Kiss: A Roller Coaster Ride through Young Adult Lit"

Do you remember your first kiss? Do you remember how you felt when hair started growing everywhere? Young adult writing is all about firsts: first love, first heartache, first time you borrowed your parent's car without asking. It's a road map to help us better understand ourselves, each other, and our place in the world.

In this Middle Grade/Young Adult workshop we will explore some of themes and trends in MG/YA and why we love them. We'll write and share some painfully embarrassing scenes, and we'll talk about obstacles and roadblocks that inhibit us from tapping into our authentic teen voice. This workshop is open to writers and poets of all levels who are interested in writing for young adults.

Registration

Stories are road maps to the spirit’s journey. They can entertain and provide escape from troubling or mundane surroundings. Stories can teach life lessons, making understandable that which formerly was mysterious and unknown. Stories are a safe place to deal with hard issues and alternate ways of thinking that might otherwise threaten, challenge or confront the reader’s own belief system. And within the very best stories there are insights which lead us to make sense of ourselves, and thus of one other and of the world.
I am a young adult writer. In my novels and stories, I invite readers into the world of working class, urban, Mexican-Americans living near the US-Mexican border. I write about race, class, identity, and immigration, all with a twist of comedy. In my own small way, I am working to reshape the teen experience in America.
Why am I drawn to this genre?
Traditional people have always seen adolescence as a pivotal time in life. It was and still is the time when we are cast out of the known and into the unknown, when we first send out a call and hope the world will answer back. Ceremonies, celebrations, mythologies and traditions were bestowed upon young people to help guide them on their life journeys. As a society, this is no longer the case.
The influence of TV and American corporate media is all-pervasive and profound. The images they project are like false mirrors that show us not how we are but how we should be. We can’t help but admire and compare ourselves to images of beauty and success of our favorite movie or TV characters, our singers or other cultural icons.
As a young girl, I remember an episode of the “Smurfs” that made me feel ashamed about the way I looked. Bad Smurfette, who was a spy for the villain Gargamel, was dark-haired and dark-eyed – like me. When Papa Smurf cured her with a touch of magic, she transformed into a sweet beautiful blonde. Though I did not understand anything about writers and the TV industry, I got the message, loud and clear, that dark was bad and light was good. This message and hundreds of others just like it led to years of low self-esteem and crazy attempts to lighten my skin, hide my cultural background, and a desire to transform myself into something that the greater society would deem sweet and beautiful.

This is why we need more diverse books, more books about ourselves and the people around us, more books that touch both on our distinct cultures that distinguish us and the universal experiences that unite us. This is why I write.

I consciously write books that honor, celebrate, and are critical of the experiences of Latino youth. When I write, I write for that poor brown girl who was me, bombarded with people telling her who she should be and how she should look. She has dreams, but she’s embarrassed to breathe life into them because she fears ridicule, disappointment, and failure. I write for her and for all the kids like her. I try to give hope. Of course I try to entertain, but I also try to commiserate with them, because it’s hard being a teenager. It’s hard to be in middle school. It’s hard to stand alone. It’s especially hard to believe in yourself when no one understands or supports you.
I was lucky to be raised in San Francisco, where it was okay to be a nonconformist and weird. In San Francisco, diversity was the norm. As authors, we can take on this role. Our stories can connect young audiences to the larger world. Our stories can inspire and motivate them to have hope, to work hard and believe in themselves, to treat one another with esteem and - most importantly - let them know that they are not alone.
I invite you to come and work with me at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference to reshape the image of what it means to be young in America. For me, writing stories with messages of self-love and love of others just as they are is at the very core of our work.

Confessions of a Conference Pusher

Guest Post By Shirin Yim BridgesMCWC Faculty 2011 and 2013, MCWC Advisory Board Member

Why I write YA

Guest Post by Malin AlegriaMCWC Presenter 2014

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Guest Post By Shirin Yim Bridges
MCWC Faculty 2011 and 2013, MCWC Advisory Board Member

Guest Post by Malin Alegria
MCWC Presenter 2014