>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Eugene Flanagan: Hello,
my name is Eugene Flanagan.
I'm the director of National
Programs at the Library of Congress.
And it's my great pleasure
to welcome you
to this morning's master
class, the kickoff event
of our daylong symposium.
The symposium is sponsored
by the library's Poetry
and Literature Center, as well as
the Folger Shakespeare Library,
the PEN Faulkner Foundation,
and the [inaudible] Foundation.
I want to thank them, and I want
to thank We Need Diverse Books,
the grassroots organization
responsible
for coordinating today's master
class, and whose goal is,
and I quote, to produce and
promote literature that reflects
and honors the lives
of all young people,
and in doing so to create a world
in which all children
can see themselves
as in the pages of a book.
The symposium, and this morning's
master class in particular,
started with one writer,
Kwame Alexander.
I would like to thank Kwame
for his work with the Poetry
and Literature Center, and for
applying a full court press
to create the terrific
programming that we
and the Folger Shakespeare
Library are presenting today.
And thank you for appreciating
that one.
Kwame is a poet, educator,
and author of 21 books.
He has written books for children
of all ages, including Surfs Up,
a picture book [inaudible]
middle grade novel,
and He Said She Said,
a young adult novel.
His book, The Crossover, received
the 2015 John Newbery Medal
for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature
for children, and the Lee Bennett
Hopkins Poetry Award presented
annually to an American
poet or anthologist
for the most outstanding new
book of children's poetry.
Kwame also works with students
in the classroom through
Books in a Day.
His program teaches and
empowers teenagers to write
and publish their own books.
And he is founder of Leap for Ghana,
an international literacy project
that builds libraries,
trains teachers,
and empowers children
through literature.
He has said, again I quote, writing
is active, writing is action,
writing is activism, writing
is being part of the world,
and that's what I like to do.
As he gets us started here today,
please join me in welcoming a man
of words and actions,
Kwame Alexander.
[ Applause ]
>> Kwame Alexander:
Wow, I said all that?
Thank you, Eugene.
Thank you to the Library of
Congress, to the Center for Poetry
and Literature, to the
Center of the Book.
Thank you to Robert
[assumed spelling]
and Anya [assumed spelling]
for being excited
and open to this opportunity.
Almost a year, if not more,
maybe eight or nine months ago,
and here's how it happened.
I was on the phone with a friend
of mine named Jacqueline Woodson.
And we text maybe once a week to
find out if we're in the same city,
because that's really the only
time we get to see each other.
Are you Minneapolis?
No, I'm in -- I'm in Milwaukee.
You know, we're close
but we're not there.
And I said, I was talking to
my editor at Houghton Mifflin,
which is the publisher of
The Crossover, and I said,
Margaret [assumed spelling], do
you all have any black editors?
Do you all have any
editors of color?
You should really think
about hiring somebody.
And this happened because I --
well, it happened because I had been
thinking about it, but I was sort
of moved to contact her immediately
because I received an e-mail
from Jason Low [assumed spelling].
And Jason said, Kwame,
we're doing a survey.
Can we get your publisher involved?
And I was like, oh, I don't know
if they're going to move on that,
but maybe there's another way I can
go about this so let me call and see
if I can, you know, sort of probe
them to hire some black editors.
I had a little bit
of cache at this time
because I had just read an
article in Publishers Weekly
that said Houghton Mifflin,
their fourth quarter results were
significantly higher than last year
because of three things,
some cookbook,
some educational unit they
had purchased from Scholastic,
and the sales of The Crossover.
So I said, let me try to use a
little bit of leverage [laughter].
And my editor's response
was, Kwame, we've tried.
We've looked for editors of color,
and there just aren't
a whole lot out there.
Now two things.
One, that's a cop out.
We all know that.
And number two, well if it's a
cop out where are the editors?
Where are the writers?
Where are the marketers?
Where are the people
of color who need
to be children's book publishing?
And so I texted Jackie
[assumed spelling] and said,
Jackie, let's do a master class.
I'm going to propose this
to the Library of Congress
and let's get editors,
writers, publishers, marketers,
promoters of the future
of color in a room
and let's just share
what we have to say.
To share what we've been through.
And Robert and Anya were on board.
And I called up friends
of mine in the industry,
Cassandra [assumed spelling]
from Scholastic, Jenny Brown now
at Random House, [inaudible],
Jason from Lee
and Low, and everybody said yes.
And so that's how we ended
up here in this room.
It started with an e-mail
from Jason, a text to Jackie,
and it really speaks to how things
work in this industry in particular,
and just in American in general.
You can't know what you don't know.
And the way you find out things
is by people who are interested
and concerned and care enough to
be able to share things with you,
resources, opportunities, tools,
tips, tricks, and techniques.
And I think that's
why we're here today.
Would you agree?
>> Yes.
>> So by a show of hands, people who
want to write or who are writing?
Excellent.
People who want to be involved
are involved in the business
of literature and publishing?
Lovely, lovely, that's so important.
Librarians, teachers?
Excellent.
And so we're all here
together under one roof.
I think the end goal -- the
end goal of today is for us
to certainly be inspired, but
more importantly it's for us
to leave here with some
practical sort of guidance,
some rules as they were, that
are going to propel us forward.
So we've got 55 people in this room,
there's no reason why five five, 10,
or 15 of you all when you leave here
today are actively pursuing your
dream, your idea of what it means
for you to be a part of the world
of Children's Book Publishing.
And it is a beautiful world.
And here's the cool part about
children's literature and publishing
when it compares to other
aspects of the publishing world.
There is no competition.
Well, no, let me not
say that [laughter].
Let me not say it like that.
There is no competitive
energy amongst us.
When you're in the room where it
happens we all trying to support
and encourage each other.
I wish I had gotten into
children's books a long time ago.
There is a spirit of love.
There is cooperation.
Yeah, it's competitive, everybody
wants to sort of do their thing
and be successful, but we
all support each other,
and you can't ask for
a better industry
if you're a part of
writing to be in.
I tell poets all the
time in particular,
if you want to make some money
get into children's books.
We spend a lot of time writing --
you know, as poets we spend a lot
of time writing and submitting and
trying to get out poems published.
And it's wonderful.
And we do it not to make money.
What, Robert Frost
said there's no poetry
in money and no money in poetry.
We don't do it to make money.
We do it because we love to do it.
But at some point you have a family.
I have two kids and I have a wife.
And you have to figure out
how to sort of, you know,
marry the art and the commerce.
And so how do you do that?
I posit that if you're a poet
you write a wonderful book of 40
or 50 poems and it's -- you know,
you sell three or 4000 copies.
And it's okay, it's cool and you
get critical acclaim and you love it
and you share and you do
your readings and so forth
versus you write one poem and it's a
picture book and maybe you sell five
or 10,000 copies of
this picture book.
And it's one poem.
See people, we're going
to get real today.
We're going to talk
[laughter] -- I'm not --
we're not going to come
up here and talk theory.
We're going to talk dollars
and cents, because this is
about you are moving
forward in this industry
and having some modicum
understanding of how it works
so that you can be successful.
Kwame off his soapbox.
Thank you, Eugene, for
that wonderful introduction
and for the reminders of the
fact that, yes, this is about art
and commerce, but it's also about
the responsibility that you all have
to help kids imagine a
better and a brighter world.
Poetry is activism.
Children's literature is activism.
So this is going to be a great day.
Anya hasn't held up her
five minutes, have you?
Okay, three minutes, okay.
So I mention that -- I called
some people to have them --
to make sure they were
in the room today.
And first up is -- I suppose how
this is going to work is our experts
in the field, we have editors, we
have publishers, we have writers.
We have just some wonderful
people here today.
They're going to come up
and present and share sort
of their experience and
some tools with you.
And then we'll do a Q and A.
And I have a few questions
in case you all get a little
shy, but this is your chance
so certainly jot down your
questions as you're listening.
About 10 years ago I
submitted to a contest
to get my children's book published.
And at this point in time this
was the only publisher that seemed
like they were involved and invested
in promoting publishing
diverse books.
How many of you all are
familiar with Lee and Low Books?
Of course.
Of course you are.
Jason Low is the publisher and
the co-owner of Lee and Low Books,
the largest multicultural children's
book publisher in the United States,
founded in 1991, year I moved
from Virginia Tech to Arlington,
Virginia, which means this
is their 25th anniversary.
[ Applause ]
It was the name 2014 Indy Publisher
of the Year by Forward Magazine,
the Eric Carle Museum selected
Lee and Low as the recipient
of the Angel Award for its
dedication to diversity books.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
our first presenter, a friend,
a figure in the publishing
industry who has been a part
of the diverse books movement
before there was a movement,
and we'll get into
that a little later.
Please welcome Jason Low.
[ Applause ]
>> Jason Low: Good
morning, how are you?
>> Good morning.
>> Jason Low: Excellent.
All right, so I don't have to
cover the 25th anniversary thing
because it's already been covered.
But it is -- it is a
major milestone for us.
And I guess in the
next 40, 45 minutes --
40 minutes maybe, I'm going to sort
of start out and talk about like,
you know, how it all started,
our progress through the years,
and then where we are now.
I guess the first question
that I'm going to answer is
that why is it even
necessary for a company
like Lee and Low Books to exist?
The world we live in
is very diverse.
And this shot here
is sort of like --
it always reminds me of
when I lived in Queens
and I would take the F train
into the city to go to work.
I mean, this is really
my world view.
This is what I always
think the world looks like.
The -- and also the fact is
that the U.S. Census Bureau
in 2014 basically cited
that children under the age
of five years old had
become a minority majority.
On top of that the other census
also added by 2020 that all kids
under the age of 18 would
become a minority majority.
So literally, you know,
that's four years from now.
I mean, that's not -- that's
practically here, right.
So I think what's interesting
about that in contrast is
that these numbers are pulled
from the Cooperative Children's
Book Center in Madison, Wisconsin,
and they keep track of the new
diverse books published each year.
And despite the population being
overall 37% people of color,
we only have over the
span of 22 years 10%
of new children's books published
each year that have any kind
of multicultural content.
So have a huge disconnect,
a huge separation, you know,
separation from what the world
looks like and then what the view
of books looks like in terms
of whose experiences are
captured in the pages of books.
Now in the beginning
when we started it was --
we could basically manage
to do the very basics.
And what I mean by that basics is we
could afford to publish a few books.
We could afford to send
them out for review.
You would post the reviews
and awards our website,
which I built actually
in the early days.
Back then there was no web.
It was all -- marketing
was basically reliant
on the U.S. Postal Service, so you
would purchase thousands of names
and you would mail a couple
catalogs out to those names.
And then we could also go and --
go to conferences with
our distributors.
So all in all that --
those are the basics.
It's not a winning formula
for getting your books known.
But luckily in our very first list
we published Baseball Saved Us.
Now the story behind Baseball
Saved Us is that it's, you know,
a book about the Japanese
internment camp, right.
And so we came out with
three books on our first list
and the distributor that
was going to, you know,
basically carry our books, liked
the other two books that we did,
but did not like Baseball Saved Us.
They basically said this
book is way too dark.
This is not going to have any kind
of, you know, audience whatsoever.
So they dropped us, you
know, as a distributor.
And so we had to essentially
find another distributor.
So after we did that, you know,
got everything squared away,
got the book out there, we
landed a full page review
in the New York Times, right.
And so in one fell swoop,
right out of the gate,
Baseball Saved Us put us on the map.
So essentially baseball
has done a few things.
It established a bar for us
in terms of what was possible
about which stories
you could tell to kids.
And it's also -- sort of
outlines, you know, good timing.
In the early '90s there was a
big push for multicultural books.
You know, so -- you know, we
were just coming on the scene.
The timing was good.
I think luck had something
to do with it.
But then also pushing the
envelope and really, you know,
sort of testing what
is possible, you know,
in terms of stories for kids.
Okay, so this is a, you
know, multi-tool leather man,
and the reason why I show this
is not because of my interest in,
you know, doing handiwork
around the house,
but it's sort of to illustrate
a point that when you are
in a startup there are some
advantages to being in a startup.
And some of those advantages
are that if you come
up with a strategy there aren't
like layers of management to sort
of weave through to
employ that strategy.
Or if you want to change that
strategy you just change it.
You don't -- there's not a
lot of discussion involved.
But there are distinct
disadvantages to being in a startup.
And some of those disadvantages are
that you essentially
wear all the hats.
I mean, when I started in Lee
and Low 18 years ago I was --
I started as the website designer.
I was the network administrator.
If your computer had a
problem I was that guy.
I was the marketing manager.
I did order processing, human
resources, hiring, firing,
you know, managing people.
I worked in the editorial
department.
I was an art director.
Did all -- you know, oversaw all
of our promotional materials.
And then on top of that there was
the role of running a business.
So I think, you know, sort
of what that illustrates is
that actually sounds kind of cool,
like that's like the kind of job
where it never gets
dull and years can fly
by because you're always
doing something different.
But what that illustrates is that
a lot of publishers, you know,
who maybe have niche missions,
get stuck in the startup mode
where they essentially wear
all the hats, they can afford
to publish some books, send them
out for review, that type of thing.
But they never grow
to the next stage.
You know, and I know there are
many small publishers who have been
around for decades and
they're still at that stage.
So it's very hard to sort
of influence what's going
on if you're still just
scrambling to do the basics.
Now historically publishing,
it's a cottage --
it was a cottage industry, you know.
It was built on selling books to
sort of mom and pop companies known
as independent bookstores.
The relationship mostly worked
back then because, you know,
the booksellers were
very knowledgeable.
They [inaudible] you know, they --
and when they did have some books
that they didn't sell they
could take that unsold stock
and they could basically return
it to the publisher for a credit.
And this was an industry standard
or courtesy at the time, all right.
So that model was pretty
much blown to pieces
when the superstores came
onto the scene, right.
And we tried for many
years to work with B and N
and [inaudible] and
things like that.
But the thing is the reason
working with them didn't work was --
it was partially because of
that industry courtesy
of returning books.
And so let me just walk
you through this, right.
So let's say you published a book
and you print 10,000
copies of that book, right.
So then Barnes and Noble
comes, they see your new books,
and then they say, oh, you
know, we like this book.
We're going to buy 5000 copies.
And you're like, great,
here you go, you know.
And so then -- so then they have the
5000, you're left with 5000, right.
So then you basically concentrate
on selling down those 5000 copies.
And then, boom, you
know, a few months later,
whatever, you've done it, right.
So you got to back and reprint that
title so you can keep selling it.
So then at the end of the year
Barnes and Noble would come back
and they would return any unsold
stock that they didn't sell.
Now, the thing is, that's a
problem because they have Barnes
and Nobles all over
the place, right.
So let's say they bought that 5000
copies, all of a sudden you --
we were seeing like 80%
returns or whatever.
So then you would have all of this
stock come back into the warehouse
and that would be on
top of the stock
that you just reprinted, right.
So the way it works in
independent publishing,
I don't know how it works in the
larger houses, is that you want
to keep about a year's worth
of inventory on hand, right.
But then with the returns,
all of a sudden,
you have two to three years'
worth of inventory hanging
out in your warehouse that you have
to pay for to basically house there.
So it basically it causes
an inventory nightmare
and you got a flood of inventory
sitting in the warehouse.
It just messes with your cash flow
because all your money
is tied up in inventory.
So really that did not
work for us, you know,
in terms of working
with superstores.
Amazon is -- basically came onto
the scene and basically destroyed,
you know, the superstores.
I mean, Borders is gone, B and
N is on the ropes now, you know,
and it's really -- you
know, and I would --
I would say though that they're
much better at selling books.
You know, I mean they got all the
algorithms, they got the code.
Basically, you know, when they
get books they sell books,
they return very little.
So that's good a good thing.
But the bad thing is the big
picture of publishing, right.
The thing is Amazon really operates
in a very uneven playing field,
and I'm going to tell you why.
Because they basically buy
books on consignment, right.
And so that means they don't have
to put any money down, right,
and then they sell their
books, whereas in booksellers
and superstores they got to buy
any books that they sell, right.
So uneven playing field right there.
So it's not as even if you
could say to Amazon, well,
we can't do this consignment
thing anymore.
You don't bargain with
Amazon [laughter].
They do what they want to do and
there isn't any discussion, right.
So I'm saying that Amazon
basically creates, you know,
an unlevel playing field since
the superstores, you know,
are on the ropes, as well as
the independent booksellers.
I think it's an unhealthy
environment, you know,
because essentially we're
heading toward a monopoly,
and monopolies aren't good, right.
I mean, at one point
Amazon was in negotiation
with one of the big houses.
They didn't like the way
the negotiations were going.
They took away all their
buy buttons, right.
I mean, that's not the way you
partner with someone, you know,
that you're working with long-term.
That's just, you know, being a
bully, being the big buy, you know,
he doesn't have to listen
to you anyone, okay.
So that's -- the thing is,
there is a price to be paid
for one click purchases and
having drones bringing packages
to your doorstep.
So what did work for us?
What worked for us
was the school market
and the school library market.
And the reason that
this works for us is
because they don't
return books, okay.
Essentially you can
manage what you're doing.
It's very, very -- you sell
something, it stays sold.
You know, that's the
way you got to go there.
So that works for us, okay.
All right, where are we?
So, getting back to what
Lee and Low Books is up to.
So back in 2000 we launched
the New Voices Award.
And I would call the New
Voices Award kind of re-upping
on your mission know for mission.
You know, before -- actually,
did I even say what
our mission was before?
Remind me.
All right, I'm going to say it now.
Anyway, the mission of Lee and
Low Books is to fill the void
of diverse books that
are not present
in the publishing industry
right now.
And to work with and nurture authors
and illustrators of color, okay.
Okay, now back here, right,
with the New Voices Award.
Essentially what we were seeing was
that there was an exorbitant amount
of diverse books being published
by white authors, right.
So we said to ourselves, okay,
we're going to have to re-up
on the mission, make
a concerted effort
to reach out to authors color.
And so what this award does is
it publishes authors, not --
who have not been published
before and who are people of color
for picture book manuscripts, right.
So one of those books is Juna's
Jar -- Juna's Jar, excuse me.
And Juna's Jar is a New
Voices Award winner.
It's about friendship.
It's about imagination, but I think
most importantly it's got this
universal message of, you
know, when your friend moves,
your best friend moves away,
you know, I'm feeling that pain,
dealing with that pain, but
through fantasy, you know,
in Juna's Jar she gets to finally
say goodbye to her best friend
in her fantasy life even
though she didn't get to do it
in her real life, you know.
So it's a really sweet book.
It was reviewed by the New
York Times and everything.
It did really well.
The second book here is, it's
Little Melba and Her Big Trombone.
So this book is about Melba Liston,
and she was a trombonist
and a ranger.
She worked with all the
greats, Dizzy Gillespie,
Count Basie, Louis Armstrong.
And she -- so the book does a good
job of talking about the gender
and racial issues that she faced
because really the music business
was an old boys club, you know,
so you had that working against her.
You know, but also captures the
love, you know, and the frenetic,
you know, excitement of jazz,
and that's really done through,
you know, our illustrator,
Frank Morrison,
who did an amazing job on this book.
The third book here
is Olinguito, right.
And it is -- this book it's
got a lot in it, right.
I mean, it's about exploration.
It's about science and environment.
It's an alphabetical book.
It's bilingual so it's good
for dual language studies.
But it's got this great message
about discovery because, you know,
basically it was believed in science
that all mammals had been catalogued
already, had been discovered.
There wasn't any new
mammals out there.
But then a years back they
discover the olinguito.
And so I think it's like a great
message to put out to kids that,
you know, that you can still
find new things in the world.
And it even has a Where's Waldo
component to it where kids can look
for the naturalist who is searching
for the olinguito throughout the
book, so there's that as well.
Okay, imprints.
So the way we've been able to
grow is through a combination
of homespun imprints as
well as some through --
we've gotten through acquisitions.
So Bebop Books, they're --
that's our imprint for kids who
are just learning how to read.
Tu Books is -- was the idea
of Editor Stacy Whitman,
and I discovered her on Kickstarter.
She was trying to raise money
to basically launch two books.
And so I contacted her
and I said, you know,
I think that you would be able to
expedite what you're trying to do
with books if you joined
us, right, and she did.
And so Tu Books sort of lends itself
to older books for readers, okay.
Children's Book Press is --
they were the first multicultural
book publisher in the United States.
They were the very first.
And so Children's Books
Press and [inaudible] Books,
they fell on hard times so
we were able to fold them
into what it is we do
because it was a great fit,
you know, in terms of diversity.
Now, managing Children's Books Press
and [inaudible] is a good
opportunity to talk about, you know,
the diverse books that
in print already.
You know, before I mention the
Cooperative Children's Book Center's
statistics on new diverse books
that are published each year,
but what about the books
that are already in print?
Now the thing is if
Children's Book Press
and [inaudible] essentially
ceased to exist,
that would be a large
amount of diverse books
that essentially would not be
available for kids to read.
So I think it's important to sort
of keep your eye on the books
that are out there already.
So when the age of
social media happened,
I would say personal blogs
came onto the scene around '96,
corporate blogs followed in 2000,
Facebook was created in 2004,
Twitter came up -- came
up -- was created in 2006.
So we began to get more
active online, right.
And so we started a blog but it took
many years for us to figure out what
to talk about online, right.
And so then we started this
series called the Diversity Gap
and we began to look at different
things a little more in-depth.
And we started children's books.
Again, Cooperative Children's
Book Center data has been
out there for years.
And we took it and we put
it in an infographic, right.
And so infographics are --
they're essentially these graphics
that allow you to take
complex data sets
and then make them completely
understandable at a glance,
you know, because they're
so easy to read.
So, you know, the Children's Book --
Cooperative Children's Book Center
data had been out there for years,
but then when we put it in the
infographic there were who were,
you know, very, very
familiar with this information
but were actually shocked
to see it displayed this way
and over so many years.
They didn't think that the
situation was this bad.
And so then when -- so let's see.
Where am I?
Okay, okay.
So then -- so then -- so
we started that online.
And then around the time
that we launched two books.
Again, we re-upping
on the mission, right.
We started the New Visions Award.
And this was -- is an award
for unpublished authors
of middle grade and
YA novels, right.
So -- and they have to
be people of color again.
So Tu Books also brought a sense of
fun, you know, to our line because,
you know, there's always that
complaint that diverse books are dry
and they're not a lot of fun and
it's like eating your broccoli,
but it's more -- but Tu Books
was able to sort of bring a sense
of adventure, a sense of, you
know, thrilling action, you know.
And so with this book
here, Killer of Enemies,
it's written by the Native American
storyteller Joseph Bruchac, right.
And so what these books allowed
us to do was come up with
like very quick one-liners of
summing up what the books are about.
So for Killer of Enemies we have --
it's an Apache post-apocalyptic
steam punk thriller [laughter].
Pretty fun, right?
So then Ink and Ashes, it's
Veronica Mars meets the yakuza,
which is the Japanese mafia, okay.
And then Yummy, Yummy is
our first graphic novel
and it is essentially --
who here likes comic books?
All right, yeah.
I'm a huge comic book fan.
I just really admire how the format
allows you to tell complex stories
through sequential artwork.
So rather than tell you
anything about Yummy I'm going
to play this book trailer for you
and it will essentially
tell you what it's about.
[ Music ]
So our next graphic novel will
actually be coming out next year,
and I believe that it's
going to be just as powerful,
if not more powerful, than
what you just saw for Yummy.
So we're really looking
forward to that.
So our online presence
continue to grow.
And when I mention the diversity
gap studies we began to branch
out into other areas,
TV, film, theater,
New York Times bestseller list,
politics, and the tech industry.
So when we looked at, for
instance, the Emmy Awards,
did you know last year that Viola
Davis was the first woman of color
to win an Emmy for a drama in
the whole history of the Emmy's.
And then when we looked at
the Academy Awards in film,
in the 87 years of the Academy
Awards history only one person
of color has won the
Oscar for best actress.
And who was that?
Halle Berry, right,
2002, in 87 years.
It's amazing, right.
So we began to look at these
different industries and we saw,
you know, there was a lot, you know,
connections being made, you know,
of seeing the same
thing happening over
and over again in different
industries.
And so these systemic problems
that we were seeing was, you know,
we were -- it wasn't one of those
-- we were letting our readers know
that publishing was
not the only industry
that was facing these things.
Now I don't think the diversity
gap provides all the answers,
but I do think that it's
asking the right questions.
So a diversity gap
on the tech field,
which you see in the lower
left-hand corner, that was the one
that essentially inspired us to run
a diversity staff survey of our own.
And so that, we released it at the
beginning of this year and it was --
and it's called the
Diversity Baseline Survey.
And so what that is, is it's
essentially it was taking a look
at staffing at publishing
and reviewers, right,
and what the diversity looked
like behind the scenes.
Now mostly up until this point most
of the feeling about the diversity
in publishing behind the
scenes was anecdotal.
You know, people knew
we had a problem
but they didn't really
know how bad it was,
and there was certainly
no data to really look at.
So when we launched
this we wanted to sort
of establish a baseline number that
essentially would act as something
that we would be able to
measure progress against,
whether it's getting better,
staying the same, or getting worse.
So from an industry overall
you could see that, you know,
79% of publishing staff is white,
78% is women, 88% is straight,
and 92% is nondisabled, right.
And so all in all, you know,
when all was said and done we had
about 34 publishers participate
and eight major reviewers.
Three out of the five
big publishers --
big five publishers
participated in the survey.
And we were really trying to make
sure that there was a nice mix
of small, medium, and
large publishers.
You know, when you -- when we could
sort of have a very even, you know,
viewpoint of what to look at.
So in the editorial department
there's 82% white, 84% female,
86% straight, and 92% nondisabled.
So the interesting part of the
survey I felt was when we began
to look at departments, right.
And we looked at the
executive level jobs.
We looked at the editorial
department.
We looked at sales.
We looked at marketing, and we
looked at book reviewers, right.
And the reason that we singled
out these particular departments,
because we consider these
departments, you know, gatekeepers.
These are essentially
the departments
that have the responsibility
to not only shape, you know,
what the books are, the main product
that we sell, but also the people
who sell them, the people who
market them, and book reviewers
who are basically the taste makers.
They're telling you what to
read and what not to read.
And so you can see that the
diversity is a little less
so at book reviewers and 89%
are white, 87% are women,
91% straight, and 88% nondisabled.
So when we sent the survey out,
1524 reviewers were surveyed,
11,713 publishing employees
were survey,
which comes out to a
total 13,237 surveys.
The response rate was about 26%.
So I think what may be at work
here is a phenomenon known
as cultural fit.
Cultural fit is defined as the
tendency, conscious, or unconscious
for executives, editors,
marketers, salespeople,
reviewers that work with,
develop, and recommend books by
and about people who look like them.
And I think cultural fit
relates to corporate culture.
And it definitely has something
to do with hiring, okay.
So, you know, just to illustrate,
you know, how this relates to Lee
and Low Books, you know, how do
our numbers look in terms of,
you know, staff diversity.
So you could see that 69% of
the people who work at Lee
and Low Books are people of color.
If we were to drill down to the
departments we have 50% of people
in editorial are people of color.
In marketing we have 75% of
people are people of color.
Sales is 50%, operations 100%.
And we have fluent Spanish
speakers in editorial,
marketing, publicity, and sales.
And then you might be
interested on how the author
and illustrator mix looks like.
And so 68% of Lee and Low's authors
and illustrators are
people of color.
So what happens next?
You know, we have all this data.
I mean, what do we do next?
And so one thing that we
decided to do from looking
at this data was we partnered with
Simmons College, because we noticed
that a lot of people who go into
publishing, who become reviewers,
actually have advanced degrees.
So what this partnership
with Simmons does,
we set up a $100,000 scholarship to
help people of color who are going
for those degrees, who are destined
to enter publishing, you know,
and help them a little bit
with that financial obstacle
of getting those advanced degrees.
We also have an internship that
we've been running for years.
About a couple years
back we switched it
to an internship for
students of color.
You know, and it's
a paid internship.
So then, you know,
students who, you know,
can't afford to do unpaid
internships wouldn't have
that problem serving
an internship with us.
Now when Lee and Low started
we could do very little outside
of the very basics.
You know, we could
publish our books.
We could send them out for review.
But we could do little
else aside from that.
Twenty-five years later
we're able to do more
to influence the big
picture of publishing, okay.
So doing more takes
many, many forms.
As readers doing more could be
just the act of buying a book.
They say that buying a book
could be a political act.
Well, choosing to buy
or read diverse books
is a conscious decision.
Now, while inequality and
the lack of representation
in books may seem insurmountable,
it is a problem like no other.
So since I'm a business
owner I look at things.
I look at problems in a certain way.
So if a problem exists, the
problem must be studied, understood,
resources allocated, goals set,
solutions tried, failures analyzed,
and then more solutions tried.
It's essentially a process of
rinse, wash, and repeat, okay.
So authors like Kwame,
[inaudible], Jackie,
everyone who basically organized
this day for us, they're doing more.
Companies like Lee and Low
and the other publishers
participating today are doing more.
And in our world of instant
gratification, on demand, you know,
basically ability, it's
really tough, you know,
because doing more isn't easy.
Okay, how -- what time of
the day is left in your day
after you've got done
binge watching, you know,
the whole second season
of Daredevil, you know.
But I want to end with a quote
from a commencement speech
that Congressman John
Lewis gave last week.
As he recounted his days being
a freedom writer in the 1960's,
and Congressman Lewis is quoted
as saying, we didn't give up.
We didn't give in.
We didn't lose faith.
We kept our eyes on the prize.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Kwame Alexander: So we have
about 11 minutes for questions.
And so you've got to ask
yourself, why was that important?
Writing is a job.
This is an industry you
want to be a part of.
This is work.
And so it's important for you
to know how the industry works,
the background of it, you know,
from multiple perspectives.
And so you got a lot of information,
a lot of things happening.
I hope you wrote down
things like Simmons College.
And when you research
what their involvement is
in the children's literature
industry some of you may say, well,
this is a path I may
want to go down.
You heard about some
of the imprints.
And that reminded me that maybe
everyone doesn't know what an
imprint is and you may be too
shy to ask that kind of question.
No question is silly enough.
If you don't want to
ask it, write it down,
hand it to me when I'm walking
down the aisles, all right.
But there are a lot of
things that Jason shared.
So let's get into questions.
Yes?
[ Inaudible ]
I'm sorry, we have two
people holding mics.
So hold up your hand and then
they will -- hold it up high.
They will bring a mic around to you.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
I guess I'll start
with a basic question.
You mentioned getting to Lee
and Low through a contest.
What are ways to get your work
to a publisher like Lee and Low?
[inaudible] what's the best way?
>> Jason Low: We basically,
in terms of manuscripts,
we accept manuscripts that are
unagented [phonetic], unsolicited.
We feel that really, you know,
in order to work with people
who have never, you know,
worked in publishing before,
not everyone is going to have an
agent out of the gate so it's kind
of silly to sort of acquire that.
So, yeah, we have a whole page.
It's called writers and
illustrators on our website.
And if you go to, you know, the
writing guidelines it has all,
you know, the information for
approaching us with new work.
I'd also like to say that if you ask
a question the first six people will
receive a free book.
So come and get your
free book [laughter].
>> Kwame Alexander: We
had a question over here.
>> Hi, my name is Morgan [inaudible]
and I'm an aspiring
bestseller for children's books.
I wanted to know for people
who are self-publishing,
what is the best route
for distribution?
Because with the larger distribution
companies they don't talk
to you unless you have
multiple titles under your name?
>> Jason Low: I mean,
the self-publishing sort
of industry is interesting, you
know, because what it points to is
that basically you're taking on
the task of being a small publisher
of one, you know, of that one
bestseller that you're going to do.
So you really have to be comfortable
if you're going to go this route.
You know, to do it all, really.
You know, kind of what I was --
when I showed you the leather man,
you got be -- you got to do
all those roles, you know.
And I'm not sure about
like, you know,
in the early days we were handled
by a distributor called Publishers
Group West, but I'm not sure
if they take on self-published
books, you know.
I mean, you may try them
because I do remember
when I walked passed their
booth at one of the shows
that sometimes they would have an
author there and she only had --
would have like three books
or something like that.
So I think that they may
have decided to take that on.
So you might check that out, yeah.
Oh, you asked a question,
so here you go.
>> Can you hear me?
Okay. My name is Akonkai [phonetic].
My question was similar to hers.
If someone wanted to start
a small publishing company,
how do you get distribution and
how do you get your books reviewed?
>> Jason Low: Yeah,
I mean, you know,
we only work with the
one distributor
so I can only speak to that.
But it really is sort of
like you're trying out,
you know, for the team, you know.
And so, you know, once you
had some books would go
and you would send them, or you
would find the contact to send them
to them, and then they would
decide whether to take you on.
There's a number of
distributors out there, you know,
and so I think you would have
to make the rounds, you know,
and hopefully find a good fit.
>> Kwame Alexander: And
just to add on to that,
because those are very
good questions.
>> Jason Low: Yeah.
>> Kwame Alexander: Go
ahead, say your thing.
>> Jason Low: Oh no, I was just --
>> Kwame Low: The book,
you got to get the book.
Distribution in this
day and age is --
there's a great equalizer out
there for self-published authors
that allows you get your
books directly to the customer
without dealing with wholesale
and distribution discounts.
That's called the Internet people.
Like, yeah, like use the
Internet, use social media
to get your books out there.
You in effect can become the
distributor for your titles,
and that's -- so let's
start there first.
Let's figure out how we're going
to sell our titles, sell our books.
Now, as Jason mentioned, the largest
wholesaler, and I guess distributor
in the world for trade, is Ingram.
And so they have a
program for small presses
and for self-published authors
that will get your books to retail
and libraries and schools.
So check out Ingram.
But yeah, you all distribute --
you know, get your books out there.
That's most important.
Right here.
>> Thank you.
So with the rise of Amazon and the
role of publishing and the fact
that Barnes and Noble is the
only major bookstore out there
that now has half the shelf space
that is used to, and with the rise
of self-publishing, what is the
future of the publishing industry
for corporate houses,
independent houses?
Is it a shrinking field, or how
can they navigate these changes
as there are more, more
alternatives, or more, more giants?
>> Jason Low: Well, I think
that's a great question.
And I really do feel that publishing
is long overdue for a little bit
of an overhaul in terms of
reimagining how to do business.
Because, you know, as you
can tell from what I --
when I was talking about
Amazon, I'm not a big fan, right.
And I don't like sort of my
terms being dictated, you know,
by someone who's not willing to, you
know, have a win win arrangement.
You know, it's basically
this is what we're doing,
it's our way or the highway, right.
And that's not a way to do business.
So I think that, you know, the
Internet can work both ways,
you know, where technology can be --
work against you, it can
also work for you, you know.
So I think that, you know, in terms
of independent publishers they
may have to go out on their own,
you know, develop,
you know, e-commerce,
you know, that basically works.
It isn't just some pretty website
that essentially is some --
you know, is a glorified catalog.
You know, basically learn
e-commerce, get in there,
and make it work, you know.
So I think publishing has to
sort of pull itself up, you know,
by its own bootstraps, and maybe
the old models are outdated
and they have to be
reformed, you know.
So I think that, you know,
publishers have to act
like the scrappy startups that
were a long, long time ago
and really think outside
the box and,
you know, get this business going.
Because I think books are amazing.
I think books are an incredible
product that hasn't really,
you know, lost any of its allure.
But the selling channel
needs work though, okay.
And publishers, if they're
going to say, hey, you know,
we're going to take your book,
we're going to get it out there,
then they got to do a much better
job of doing that, you know,
and can't be beholden to,
you know, the big gorilla
in the room or whatever, you know.
So I hope that answers
some of your question.
>> Thank you.
>> Hello my name is Keisha
Jones [assumed spelling],
as you can see earlier.
Have there been situations where
a self-publisher was so successful
that a publishing company
wanted to publish their product?
>> Jason Low: Sure.
>> Has something like that
occurred with your company?
>> Jason Low: It has happened with
us, but there have been some stories
of books that have
been self-published
and become huge, you know.
What was that book that was --
[ Inaudible ]
Yeah, [inaudible] is a
good example of that.
I mean, there's some amazing --
you know, where the person
they got rejected a 1000 times.
They said I'm going
to do it on my own.
All of a sudden they were selling,
you know, books hand over fist.
And so then a publisher got wind
of that, basically took that book,
you know, and made it
their own or, you know,
helped them distribute it even more.
So, yes, that is --
that does happen, yeah.
>> Kwame Alexander: It happens --
it happens -- it happens a lot.
>> Jason Low: Yeah.
>> Kwame Alexander: And when you
-- so I'll give you two examples.
One, some of you -- you all
look pretty young though
so you all may not remember.
But there was this writer
named E. Lynn Harris.
>> Yeah.
>> Kwame Alexander: Remember that?
And E. Lynn Harris wrote novels
featuring characters that were gay
and he self-published
these characters.
The Invisible Life
was his first one.
And he ended up becoming a
huge number one New York Times
bestseller, and I forgot
which publisher he was with.
But more recently,
Fifty Shades of Gray,
and those were e-books
that she published.
So it's very common.
I think we have time for
maybe one more question.
Let's make it good.
Right here, make it good.
>> It looks like you're
out of books,
but I still have a
question [laughter].
So my name is Lisa
Yearwood [assumed spelling],
another bestselling
author soon one day.
I wanted to know in this culture
where we have a push towards
brief clips type of reading,
what do you see as the
future of reading in general?
Do you have hope?
Do you see new ways?
I see that you have the clip
for the book and that kind
of reaches a new audience
and draws them in.
But there used to be kind of
this [inaudible] for reading
and I was wondering how
you feel about that?
>> Jason Low: Yeah, I mean, I -- it
depends on what day you talk to me.
I mean, as I said, I
have great faith in,
you know, books in general.
You know, I still think
they're great.
But, I mean, one cannot, you
know, bury your head in the sand
and basically not look
at the way the world is.
I mean, there's just -- you
know, there's an amazing amount
of alternative entertainment
out there, you know.
I mean from binge watching,
they certainly didn't have
that when I was growing up,
you know, to, you know, just --
I mean, when I walk down the
aisle and I'm on my commuter train
in the morning and everybody
is glued to their devices,
there aren't a lot of people who
are reading print books, you know.
And so, you know, I'm not like
looking over people's shoulder
and seeing what they're
doing on their device.
Are they reading, you know,
maybe on their devices?
So essentially that that
points to e-books, you know.
But, I mean, I can speak
personally from, you know,
e-book sales that essentially that's
not happening for children, right.
Maybe it's happening for adult,
but not so much for children.
So for us it's still paper books.
It's still books, you know, that
you can hold in your hand, you know,
and have that, you know,
tactile experience.
So I'm hopeful, you know, because,
you know, I think at the end
of the day, you know, I'm a pretty
smart guy and I might be able
to come up with something for us.
But I'm hoping that, you know,
this industry is also filled
with smart folks as well and that,
you know, if they want to see books
around they're going to have
to get innovative, you know,
and think of new ways sell them.
So it's a bit of a dodge
that answer, you know,
but I don't have all the answers
though is what it really comes
down to.
>> Kwame Alexander: Ladies and
gentlemen, Jason Low [applause].
Thank you, man.
>> Jason Low: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Kwame Alexander: So when we
recap sort of that experience,
what we learned is that we
need to know this business.
Jason knows this business.
He's known it for 25 plus years.
And you want to be in this world
of changing the lives of children,
you've got to learn the business.
You have to know the ins and
outs, and so it's important.
The Crossover, which was written
over the course of five years,
was a novel that had
been rejected quite a bit
by publishers, which is nothing new.
The writers who are published
in this room will tell you
rejection is a part of the game,
and had been rejected quite a bit.
And I guess through a little bit
of perseverance I stuck to it,
and eventually was rewarded
with this phenomenal life
changing honor, Newbery Medal.
As it happens -- yeah,
free to clap [laughter].
[ Applause ]
As it happens, there are 14
members of a committee that decide
which book will be the most
distinguished contribution
to American literature
for children that year.
And one of those 14 members is
here today, who's responsible
for ultimately changing
my writerly life.
Jennifer Brown is the vice president
and publisher at Alfred Knopf Books
for Young Readers, an
imprint of Random House.
Now if you all know, again this
goes back to knowing the business
and knowing the history,
Alfred Knopf
and Blanch Knopf published what
famous black [inaudible] of Harlem?
Come on, [inaudible]?
She's -- Jennifer is the former
children's editor of Self Awareness,
the director of the Children's
Literature Center at Bank Street.
She served as a children's
review editor
for Publishers Weekly for 10 years.
She has served on numerous
industry committees,
including the 2014 John
Newbery Medal Committee.
Prior to Publishers Weekly she
was a children's book editor
at HarperCollins, and an elementary
school teacher, grades K to two.
I invited her here because,
like Jason, she's in publishing
but from a different
perspective and I want you all
to be equipped with all of it.
Please welcome my friend,
Jennifer Brown.
[ Applause ]
>> Jennifer Brown: Good morning.
>> Good morning.
>> Jennifer Brown: So
I just need to start
by saying I've been thinking a lot
about what happened in Orlando.
And I keep thinking what if that
shooter had had an opportunity
to read a story that
would change his mind.
You know, it's in the midst of that
sadness, I think all of us mourning,
what happened there, we had
a celebration of Hamilton,
which is such an extraordinary
feat of theater and story
and revealing the complexity of the
men who helped form this nation.
We're sitting in the room of one of
their -- Thomas Jefferson's Library,
so I think we're here to have a
really interesting conversation
about the many voices
that we need to hear.
So without further ado.
There are so many books,
and the question
for me is how do we get
certain ones to stand out.
So I'm going to talk to you
today as aspiring writers,
but also as people we need
in the publishing industry.
And I'm going to try to collect
some of the voices that I've heard
through my career,
which is rather long,
and just let you know how many
different possibilities there are
for you.
Some back -- some background
about me as a reader.
These are the books I grew up with.
My brother, who is four
years younger than I am,
and I remember [inaudible]
of the I Can Read Book Club.
I read aloud to him.
When I taught I read
aloud to my students even
after they could read independently.
And my husband and I still
read aloud to each other.
I cannot stress enough the
importance of reading aloud.
And these are the books I grew
up with in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
In first grade I saw the
movie Oliver with Mark Lester,
Jeff Wilde, and Ron Moody.
In third grade I played Fanny,
Scrooge's little sister
in A Christmas Carol.
I wound up writing my
junior paper in college
about the orphan figure in Dickens.
You can see that my
obsessions are lifelong.
So I'm going to go through a lot
here, so if you have questions
at the end that will be great.
I'm just going to speed through.
I fell in love with James
Joyce when I read A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man.
I fell in love with this book
because of what it taught me
about Irish history and
politics through the fights
around Stephen Douglas's
dinner table.
I was thrilled to discover
that Ulysses began
as a short story in Dubliners.
I never read Finnegans Wake.
So what's an English major to do?
That's what I did, I
majored in English.
I was bent on avoiding the
profession everybody told me I had
to go into, which was teaching,
though I did end up teaching.
I read Maxwell Perkins, Editor
of Genius, and I saw that he got
to work with many of
my favorite authors.
So I decided that's what I would do.
I would move to New York
and be just like Dickens.
I'm sorry Perkins.
But when I went to what was
then Harper and Row to interview
for a job as an adult trade
editor, the head of HR said,
everyone thinks they want
to be an adult trade editor,
but you haven't met Bill Morris.
That's Bill.
He was the director
of library promotion
for Harper Children's Books.
At conferences you are more likely
to see him looking like this.
This is Bill with Jean
Craighead George, who wrote Julie
of the Wolves and My
Side of the Mountain.
And that's me with Trev Jones
[assumed spelling] on the left.
Oh, I'm just speeding through here.
I don't know what happened, okay.
That me with Bill right
out of college,
and that's Trev Jones
in the pink blazer.
She was the children's reviews
editor at School Library Journal.
Bill was my mentor
until he died in 2003.
He introduced me to the most
wonderful people in publishing
and he was an avid reader.
His favorite book was portrait
of a lady by Henry James.
He taught me everything
about Harper's rich history.
This is briefly my circuitous
route, and I'm posting this here
because you can never make
a mistake, that's my view.
Every choice I made led
to something interesting.
So I started out, as I
said, in marketing as --
and then an editorial
assistant at Harper.
Then I left to teach K through 12,
but I continued reading manuscripts
at Harper and also worked
on the annotated catalog,
which is the backlist
catalog which means anything
that was published
more than a year ago.
So I went back into that
in the summer with Bill.
Then I was offered a job as a
head teacher and Bill intervened
and said we need an
educational marketing manager.
And that was at a time when
whole language was taking off.
I don't know how many
of you remember that.
But that was when teachers
were starting
to use trade books
instead of textbooks.
And I thought, wow, I
get to see, you know,
what the whole country was
doing, what their approach was.
And we had so many
wonderful books at Harper
that I thought this
would be an opportunity
to really find out
what was happening.
Then I became the reviews
editor at --
first SLJ as a freelancer with Trev
Jones, who you saw, and also at PW,
and I ended up staying
at PW for 10 years,
and then moving to Shelf Awareness.
And while I did my work at Shelf
Awareness I also was volunteering
at the Bank Street
Children's Book Committee.
And that ended up evolving
into the director of the Center
of Children's Literature there.
And now I'm publishing
director at Knopf.
Why did I chart this as a circle?
Because you will see -- soon
see how this is all connected.
In the great green room there
was a telephone and a red balloon
and a picture of the cow --
the cow jumping over the --
>> Moon.
>> Jennifer Brown: Moon, okay.
Do you know how early a child
learns to complete that sentence?
As soon as they can form words.
That's what I discovered when Dr.
Perry Class [assumed spelling] came
to speak at Bank Street.
Think about the power of that,
that a phrase of yours could be one
that a child holds close
through his or her whole life.
In the beginning was the
word and the word was
with God and the word was God.
Whether or not you are a
believer this is a powerful idea,
that from the word comes a world.
As a writer that is what you do.
You create a world with words.
What you want to do is invite
young readers into your world
with those very first words.
Where's papa going with that axe?
Does anybody know what that's from?
[ Inaudible ]
Very good.
We know by the end of that first
paragraph that Fern is going
to rescue this little pig, that's
going to turn out to be Wilbur.
Good thing the plane had seatbelts
and we had been strapped
in tight before takeoff.
Without them that last jolt would've
been enough to throw Vonetta
into orbit and Fern
across the aisle.
Still, I anchored myself and
my sisters best as I could
to brace us for whatever came next.
Those clouds weren't
through with us yet
and dealt another Cassius
Clay left and a right jab
to the body of our Boeing 727.
That's the opening to One Crazy
Summer by Rita Williams Garcia.
Right away you wonder
where are they going?
Why are these three
sisters traveling alone?
And Delfina's mention of Cassius
Clay places us in a historical era
and hints at the civil
rights movement that's going
to be the setting for
the entire novel.
My name is India Opal Buloni and
last summer my daddy, the preacher,
sent me to the store for a
box of macaroni and cheese,
some white rice, and two tomatoes,
and I came back with
a dog [laughter].
Now, if you go to the Kerlan
Collection at the University
of Minnesota, you will discover
just how many drafts it took Kate
DiCamillo to come up
with that first.
Walter Dean Myers'
papers are there also.
And there are several other
wonderful institutions
that have those kinds
of papers available.
Some of them are online.
So if you want to see
me after we can talk
about how you can research
some of those things,
because they're really instructive.
I just put Jon Klassen's I Want My
Hat Back here as a way of thinking
about format, because he does
something really interesting here.
There's no word wasted.
He doesn't say he said, she said.
He shows you by the color
of the type who's talking.
And one of the wonderful things
is the bear is looking for his hat
and he's asking of a variety of
animals and no one's helping him.
So he finally says,
thank you anyway.
And what happens when
you read it aloud
to children is they start going
thank you anyway, and they make it
into this little musical refrain.
It's uncanny.
No matter who you read
it to, how many classes,
what age, they all do that.
I love showing this book because A
Hole Is To Dig is by Ruth Krauss.
She wrote it and Maurice
Sendak illustrated it.
She picked him, which never
happened in the 1930's.
She was a member of the Writers
Lab along with Margaret Wise Brown,
Crockett Johnson, which was Ruth
Krauss' husband, who wrote Harold
and the Purple Crayon, and they all
invented this children's literature
for very young children.
At that time there was very little
being published for young children,
and certainly not the way they
talked about the world or saw it.
So I'm just going to show
you a couple spreads here.
A face is so you can make faces.
Huh, rugs are so dog have napkins.
A hole is for a mouse to live in.
Ruth Krauss used to say the story
-- she actually published at Harper
and the legend was that she
thought she would be sued by one
of her former students because
she basically just wrote
down everything they said.
The sun is to tell you
when it's every day.
I just love these.
You can just pour over them.
Okay, I wanted to touch
on information books,
because this is a really
booming area as well.
And this -- what I love about
this book is that she --
it takes you into Tony Sarg,
who is very approachable.
He created the Balloons
Over Broadway,
the Thanksgiving Day
parade balloons.
But he started as a
puppeteer and a toymaker.
And you can see Melissa's
notes here.
And most authors and artists do
give you a window into their process
if you go into their website.
And I just think that she's
such a wonderful resource.
Her journal pages look
just like her books.
How Many Jellybeans I have here
because Andrea Menotti was trying
to explain to her children how math
works and she couldn't find anything
to explain it so she
wrote this book.
And in his acceptance speech, Yancey
Labat, who is the artist for this,
thanked his publisher for creating a
special casing to house this foldout
which shows actually
1 million jellybeans.
And later I can tell
you how he did that.
But I just love kids being able
to actually see what
1 million looks like.
The Cook Prize is a prize
that Bank Street came up with
to encourage the publication
of STEM books, science,
technology, engineering, and math.
And I wanted to mention
this in the Irma Black Award
because the Irma Black Award is
for a book that works together
with both words and pictures,
and both of these prizes
are selected by children.
The -- you can register
online and you find
out what the four finalists
are and you get an opportunity
to have all the children voting.
And I included Moonshot
because Brian Floca took
10 years to write it.
He uses the endpapers for a lot
of the information he wasn't
able to fit into the book.
And he is another who
shares his research,
his sketch stages,
before his final art.
We Are America.
This is one of my favorite books,
and I think it's so
timely right now.
This was a book that Walter Dean
Myers wrote in response to 9/11.
He thought I was one of those people
who was critical of my country
and I wanted to look again at why
I live here and why I love it.
I'm going to get emotional, okay.
So, and his son, Christopher Myers,
who's on the left, did the artwork
for it and did a huge
amount of research himself.
And they showcase individuals who
I hadn't known about in history,
and these giant murals which are
then, you know, printed in these --
this very nice oversized book,
but it doesn't do justice
to the beautiful murals.
And again, Walter draws from the
founding fathers in these documents
and it just gives you that sense
of complexity of who these men were
and what they were struggling with.
This was a juxtaposition
that I loved.
It's the Mayflower on the left and
present day refugees on the right.
And that is a theme that goes on
through the book and really plays
up the importance of this
country's immigrants and the people
who were here before we came.
We Were There, Too, I have this here
because Phillip Hoose discovered
Claudette Colvin's story
when he was doing the research
for We Were There, Too,
which was about young people
who made a difference.
And he tried for years
to get Claudette Colvin
to do her full story.
She was 14 years old when
she refused to sit --
she was 14 years old when she
refused to stand up on a Montgomery,
Alabama bus nine months
before Rosa Parks.
And her story is very complicated.
This book is extraordinary.
And she only agreed to an interview
with him after she retired,
and it'll become clear why.
But the two of them toured
together to promote this book,
and it's extremely moving.
To me it was a story persistence
and trust and partnership.
And I have Gene Luen Yang here
because he's going to come
up in a few minutes
again, but Boxers
and Saints is an extraordinary
way to look
at the Boxer Rebellion
from both sides.
And by the end you feel like
they both really had a reason
for fighting, and that's the beauty
of what Gene Luen Yang does here.
There are even panels that
are identical in both books,
but you get to see the
perspective of each narrator
so you really get a sense of just
how complicated the situation was.
I'm just touching on
beginning readers.
It was really interesting to me that
these began both at Random House
and at Harper and Row in 1957.
So there was this kind of bubbling
up of necessity to have books
for children who wanted
to read independently.
And I have these two here just
to give you a sense of how --
again, how format is changing.
I feel like there's so much more we
can do now with printing and online
so you can really see what
form your story needs to take.
I love what [inaudible]
does with panels.
Who would have thought of
panels for beginning readers?
And Francoise Mouly did something
very similar with her Tune Books.
Francoise is the art
director for The New Yorker,
and she also developed
her own magazine
with her husband, Art Spiegelman.
So they, too, are using
cartoon panels
to teach children how to read.
Kevin Henkes is one of
my favorite writers.
He started when he was 19.
He did a series of
books called Penny,
and with each book her
world gets a little bigger.
I have him here because he also
writes for very young children,
Wemberly Worried being one of them.
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse is
for the newly independent child.
And The Year of Billy
Miller is a novel.
And I'm going to talk about a few
other authors who run the gamut.
Pam Munoz Ryan, her
biography of Marian Anderson.
Echo, which is her most
recent, gorgeous book,
three different perspectives
that come together.
Esperanza Rising, which is
kind of her family story.
Kwame Alexander, Acoustic Rooster
and His Barnyard Band picture
book [applause], yay, Crossover,
fabulous middle grade
novel, and He Said She Said,
which is his [inaudible].
We mentioned the same one, see that.
Grace Lin, she does Ugly
Vegetables as a board book.
Ling and Ting is a beginning reader.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is
her Newbery Honor middle grade book.
So these are just some -- I think
it really helps sometimes to think
about author studies and what
you're -- what your format can be.
Jacqueline Woodson,
obviously, Each Kindness,
which is this wonderfully
open ended story
where it just leaves both the
narrator and the reader thinking
about what could've
been done differently.
Show Way [inaudible] book
and, of course, her memoire,
Brown Girl Dreaming in poetry.
Marilyn Nelson is another
poet I adore.
Beautiful Ballerina, a
very simple picture book.
How I Discovered Poetry is
her memoir of becoming a poet.
And Emmett Till should have won
the Pulitzer Prize in my view.
And Walter, Walter was one of the
first people I met in publishing.
And he just never stopped.
I mean, he was always researching.
Every time he went to
a new town he would go
to the antique stores
and look for books.
And he started collecting
old photographs
and that became Brown Angels.
He also discovered the story behind
At her Majesty's Request in one
of those antique stores as well.
And again, Monster was
-- broke every format.
He created a genre with this
I think, the idea of a script,
to my knowledge, I can't get
another one that came before that.
I wanted to mention Neil Gaiman
because I think he does something
that's really instructive
for writers, which is
he Tweets all day long.
I don't know many of you follow him.
And then he crafts a blog at the end
of the day that's primarily composed
of his Tweets, and it helps me think
about how we can use our writing
and our thinking throughout
the day to reflect.
So I just wanted to mention that
if any of you have a chance, okay.
So I have [inaudible] I've
gotten away from my notes
because I'm just trying
to speed through.
Let's see.
So basically I wanted to just talk a
little bit about the people I've met
in my travels and some of the things
that they had to say
about publishing.
And also to talk about how, you
know, I only saw a few hands I think
when I looked around of those of you
who wanted to go into publishing,
but it's such a great way to learn
the inside if you want to write.
And I'm just going to single
out Mya Mutain [assumed
spelling] who is back here.
Mya started as our
intern last fall --
last fall at Knopf and now she's
a full-time editorial member
of Random House.
So Mya is one of those people with
a double life who you're going
to hear more of in a moment.
So, sorry, I forgot
-- I've lost my notes.
So this is Calvin Reid.
Calvin, when I got to PW, oh
gosh, it was probably 2005,
he was the only person
talking about comics.
And he was the only person
talking about e-books.
And he said -- I said, Calvin,
how did you get into publishing?
And he said, well, I
came to be an artist
and I got a job at Library Journal.
But Calvin is really such
a generous human being.
When America Born Chinese landed
on my desk at Publishers Weekly
when I was the children's editor,
I didn't know what to do with it.
Calvin said, you know,
you need to review this.
This is a children's book.
And I said, I wouldn't know
how to evaluate it, Calvin.
So he reviewed it in his comics
column, but then he proceeded
to teach me everything he knew
about comics, pacing, color,
the use of kind of telescoping
in and then coming back out.
He was so generous.
And he said -- he joined PW during
an alternative comics movement,
and any process like pantographic
and [inaudible] were just
starting superhero comics,
and he knew that PW was the
perfect vehicle to make the case.
Kwame talked about
children's books as activism.
And, you know, we talked a little
bit about what might've happened.
How would people behave differently
if they had the compassion
of a children's book
that made a difference?
And I think, you know, what Calvin
did was decide this is the way I'm
going to be able to get
comics out in the world.
Phoebe Yeah, who is
also very involved
in this we need diverse books
movement, was introduced
to publishing through Jane
Yolen, who is an author
and who also taught at her college.
John Adamo, our director
of marketing, loved music
and publishing and he ended
up going into publishing,
but he still plays in a band.
This is James Perry on the
left, Ken Kong on the right.
James said he always was read to
as a child and he wanted to go
into publishing because he
felt it would make a difference
in the world.
And Ken, I always like to
tell stories like this,
Ken began his attempt in the
legal department at Golden Books.
And when Golden Books was
acquired by Random House he stayed
and he's just gone up
and up and he's now one
of our finance business managers.
Ali Biber wanted to
come to into publishing
because of how creative it was.
Lisa Clark, this was
my favorite, she said,
a senior executive I admired said,
figure out what makes your
heart sing and follow that path.
She's head of our HR division
and she treats everyone
as if it's a problem
solving situation.
She knows that she can work
it all out, and I think she's
so committed to children's books.
Okay, so now I'm going
to give you a little,
just a tiny bit of advice here.
Adam Silvera, some
of you may know him,
he write a book called
More Happy Than Not.
He approached me at the Pen
Writers Voices program and he said,
you know, I'd really like
to review children's books.
I work at Barnes and Noble.
And I said, well, send
me some reviews
and I'd be happy to look at them.
He was an excellent
writer obviously,
and he started reviewing
for Shelf Awareness.
He also ended up being a [inaudible]
manager at Books of Wonder,
which is a small independent
children's bookstore in New York.
So my advice is to get
into your local bookstore,
offer to write shelf talkers.
See if they need help shelving.
Maybe there's a way you
could help with events.
Go to your local library, see
if there opportunities there.
These are the people who
really know children's books.
And if you want to learn a lot about
who's coming up, who's coming in,
you know, to actually
see writers speak,
these are wonderful resources.
B. B. Lewis told the story
once of just trying to break
into children's books and going
every day at lunch time when he was
on break and asking his
local bookseller to walk him
through her favorite books.
The other is to volunteer.
As I mentioned, I volunteered
at the Children's Book Committee
at Bank Street and that ended up
turning into a three day a week job.
And I think there so
many ways to get involved
if you want to get involved.
There's also SCBWI.
How many of you know about that?
Society of Children's Book
Writers and Illustrators,
they have conferences
all around the country.
They have a newsletter that
helps with copyright information
and who are the new agents, who
might be looking for new clients.
And you can -- you can work at their
local conferences and get involved.
They also have one on one manuscript
critiques who pay a little bit more,
but it's really worth it.
And the other thing
is, literary agents.
Many of them are based
all around the country,
but even if you aren't
near one you could offer
to critique manuscripts
for them from afar.
And sometimes that's how
certainly the person who is the hub
of our department now started,
and she also worked at Algonquin
as a volunteer while she
was at North Carolina.
So I think I'm just going
to turn it over now.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Kwame Alexander: Publishers
Weekly, Shelf Awareness,
writing shelf talkers, some
of this stuff may sound
like you have no idea what she's
saying, what she's talking about.
Some of you already know.
But those are key things.
And so you're taking these notes.
A master class is where students
come to learn from an expert.
So some of this stuff you may not
know, but the experts know it.
So write that stuff down.
The other thing we learned that was
really major here is the importance
of knowing people and sort of being
around and surrounding yourself
with people in the industry.
It's -- we don't like to often
say it but people hook people
up when they know you,
and when they like you.
Am I right?
>> Yeah.
>> Kwame Alexander:
That's how it happens.
If I like you, yeah.
If I don't know you,
then I don't know you.
I can't know what I don't know.
My dad liked to say that.
What does that mean [laughter]?
And so here's my example,
my experience.
In 2008 I got invited to a party
at Scholastic by a friend of mine.
I didn't know anybody at Scholastic.
But I said -- my wife was like,
you got to go to the party, Kwame.
You got to be in the
room where it happens.
I got to the party.
It's in the penthouse of Scholastic,
11th floor or whatever floor it is.
I'm walking around,
I'm like, yeah, hey,
I'm just -- I'm Kwame Alexander.
I've written some -- a lot of poems,
you know, done my thing [laughter].
And I don't really know why
I'm there but I'm just there.
And so somebody introduces
me to Lois Bridges.
Lois Bridges works for
Scholastic Professional,
which is the educational side,
they're publishing
teacher resources.
And so we hit it off.
We talked and then I'm out.
That was 2008.
It's now 2016.
Scholastic eight years later just
published my professional kit,
book, videos, the whole nine.
And who was the publisher?
Lois Bridges.
Eight years ago I met her and I'm
just a student who is writing poems.
And now I'm like one
of her major authors.
You all were in the Jennifer Brown.
How often are you in the
room with a publisher
of Alfred Knopf Books
for Young Readers?
That just doesn't happen.
People would [inaudible].
And so I'm not saying bombard
her with your manuscripts,
but I'm saying keep that in mind.
Speaking of Scholastic, Cassandra
Pelham grew up in Delaware
and graduated from
Spellman you all [laughter].
She is a senior editor
for the Graphics
and Scholastic Press
Imprints at Scholastic
and is edited award-winning number
one New York Times bestselling books
like Smile.
Which is another about
Jennifer's presentation,
is that she mentioned so many books.
You got to -- you got
to read these books.
Cassandra spends her time enjoying
the arts, hanging out in Brooklyn,
and just pretty being
awesome and fabulous.
You all give it up
for Cassandra Pelham.
[ Applause ]
>> Cassandra Pelham: Good morning.
>> Good morning.
>> Cassandra Pelham: I want to thank
Kwame Alexander, Jacqueline Woodson,
and We Need Diverse Books for
inviting me to participate
in this symposium, and the
Library of Congress for hosting us.
This is my first time here
and I am simply elated.
Inside I'm like, oh my
gosh, we're at the Library
of Congress right now, but I
will try to keep it together
for the next 20 or so minutes.
I can't make any promises
beyond that.
I'm here today to talk a bit
about my journey in publishing.
My parents are really
academically oriented,
and between them they have seven
undergraduate and graduate degrees.
This means I was raised in a home
filled books, books on shelves,
books stacked in piles in
every available surface,
books in overflowing boxes.
They were mostly books about God,
the black experience, psychology,
finance, and my dad's fraternity,
all topics that I can now get into.
But when I was a kid I found them
to be extraordinarily boring.
It was my older brother's room
that held the jackpot, fiction.
He had all of the good
stuff, the classics.
And I tore through his
book along with my own.
So I was that 10 year old kid
whose favorite books were Roll
of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred
D. Taylor, and East of Eden
by John Steinbeck [laughter].
My brother is six years
older than me.
We're very close and it was
he who taught me to read books
about pictures using
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
From then on you couldn't
keep me away from books.
I loved living in imagined worlds.
So that's what I did until I
enrolled at Spelman College
in Atlanta, Georgia as a
childhood development major
with a minor in creative writing.
I had the intention of
eventually working with kids
in some capacity and writing.
So a semester passed and I
realized something was missing.
I wasn't reading as
much as I used to.
And I wasn't feeling as passionate
about my studies as I knew I could.
I wanted to explore literature and
the history of the written word
in a way I hadn't previously.
So I switched to an English major
and dropped the creative writing
minor, because I also realized
that I liked writing a
lot more when I did it
on my own time and in my own time.
At Spelman I read books by writers
I had never been exposed to before
because I was rarely assigned books
by writers of color in grade school.
Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks,
James Baldwin, Julia Alvarez,
Octavia Butler, [inaudible],
the list goes on.
This was a whole new
kind of education.
My mind was thoroughly
blown and I was in heaven.
Spelman is where I read
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
for the first time, a
book that changed my life
and would form my career later on.
As I neared the end of my
sophomore year I still was not sure
of what I would actually
do with an English degree.
I often ask myself, what do
people do with English degrees?
Yes, reading books,
writing papers about books,
and talking about books is all quite
lovely, but I knew I couldn't live
in my little literary non-revenue
generating world forever.
People would often
ask me if I planned
to be a teacher or go to law school.
My answer was always
no, no, thank you.
With this complete lack of
clarity on my own life I started
to look for a summer job.
I very much wanted to
do something meaningful,
something that would
actually mean something to me,
and do all the studying I
had done so far it justice.
I did not just want to go back to
halfheartedly selling Cutco knives
out of my parents' house in Delaware
like I had the summer before.
Spelman has an office of career
planning and development.
And one day I spent hours there,
browsing their entire catalog
of internship brochures
and applications.
I looked at every single piece of
paper in every single filing cabinet
and found a few things
that I thought I could do,
but nothing that sounded like it
would ignite a fire inside of me.
Kind of dramatic, right?
I was quite a vocational
romantic at 19.
I was feeling kind of bummed and
uninspired when I spotted a pile
of miscellaneous envelopes
on a small table.
Among them a familiar
red logo peaked out.
I grabbed just that one envelope
from the pile and opened it.
In it were five applications
for something called the Scholastic
Children's Defense Fund Fellowship.
I was immediately intrigued
because, like many kids,
I had grown up reading
Scholastic books,
and I had especially been obsessed
with Scholastic Book Club flyers.
I read an application and
I saw that I could apply
to be a summer fellow
assigned to one of a variety
of departments, including editorial.
Editorial, something stirred
in my spirit and I started
to get really excited because
I knew that this was it.
This was the meaningful
summer job that I would do.
Being an editor had never once
crossed my mind, but sure,
I had often been happy to
tell my friends what was wrong
with their book reports
and term papers.
I love to read books,
and think about books,
the write about books,
and talk about books.
So why not?
The applications at the
fellowship would take place
at Scholastic's headquarters
in New York City
and housing would be provided.
So at the very least if I got
in I could put off selling
Cutco knives for another summer.
So I got in along with four
other college students of color,
because this fellowship was
specifically geared toward
introducing people of color to the
publishing industry with the hope
that they might someday
become full-time employees.
I was assigned to my first
choice, editorial, and was placed
in Cartwheel Books, a Scholastic
imprint for very young readers.
That summer I read a lot
of slush, unsolicited
and unagented [phonetic]
manuscripts,
wrote a lot of reader's reports, and
wrote a lot of rejection letters.
But I also got the opportunity
to write the first draft
of an early reader, and everyone
I worked with was really nice.
In addition to our departmental
duties, the fellows had to work
on a group project together.
We were tasked with developing a
book proposal with Doug E. Fresh
that would be presented at
an acquisitions meeting.
It was very cool and I was like,
yes, this is what editors do.
They develop book proposals
with a human beatbox [laughter].
But it wasn't all fun, games,
and sitting around coming
up with clever ideas
with Doug E. Fresh.
In addition to our departmental
duties and the work we did
on the group project
evenings and weekends,
we also had weekly mentor meetings
with the programs director,
Karen Proctor.
During these meeting we would
discuss the articles and books
that Karen had assigned
to us as required reading,
pieces about leadership, diversity,
corporate culture, and success.
And we would also talk about
all our little intern drama,
because that housing I
mentioned that was provided, we,
the fellows who worked together
so intensely on the group project,
and we're already around
each other for so many hours,
we also lived together
in [inaudible] College
Housing in Manhattan.
This was a very intense, very
different sort of bonding.
I was always tired and I struggled
to find time and space to be alone.
But I was working harder than
I ever had up until that point.
I was learning.
I was growing.
And I was, somewhat
reluctantly, stretching.
The five of us were being urged
to reach deep inside ourselves
and bring forth every fiber of
our potential, and it was hard.
And while both living and
working with the same small group
of people could be painful at times,
who knows if those of us who weren't
from New York could have figured out
how to be a summer intern in big,
confusing, expensive New York City.
Sponsored housing was
essential to my --
was essential to my participation in
the program and part of why I'm able
to be here today at the
Library of Congress [laughter].
And here's a fun fact,
when I eventually moved
to New York City permanently I
rented an apartment off the same
train line I took to
Scholastic everyday as an intern.
That's how much a part of my comfort
zone that summer housing had become.
I made me feel like New York
was possible and manageable,
both as an intern and beyond.
Fortunately, in the past 10
years I have since branched out
and ridden other trains [laughter].
So I went back to school.
I applied to be Scholastic
Children's Defense Fund Fellow,
for the summers following
my junior and senior years.
And I participated in the program
for a total of three summers.
The second summary I was assigned
to Arthur A. Levine Books,
publisher of Harry Potter.
That was the summer Harry Potter and
the Half Blood Prince was published.
It's difficult to explain
how incredible being
at Scholastic for that moment was.
Our group project that summer was
to organize a panel discussion
of diverse writers and artists that
the entire company was invited to.
And the third summer our group
project gave us the opportunity
to travel to New Orleans.
It was one year after Hurricane
Katrina, and we were tasked meeting
with educators and
librarians and then presenting
to Scholastic what we
learned along with a plan
for how Scholastic could help the
schools and libraries still in need.
At this point I had graduated and
had three transformative summers
as a Scholastic CDF Fellow.
By that time I had decided
I want to be an editor.
When I thought about it
it made perfect sense.
And at Scholastic I could use my
English degree as well as invoke
that abandoned early
childhood development major.
All I needed was to be exposed
to editorial as a career path
and a realistic chance
at making it happen.
My third summer as a fellow
I was assigned to graphics,
Scholastic's Graphic Novel Imprint,
which had been established the
year before, and Scholastic Press.
They were in need of
an editorial assistant.
So at the end of my third summer
they created a position for me.
I am now senior editor for
those same two imprints.
I have a particular
passion for comics
and acquiring graphic
novels for every reader.
I've edited a number of New York
Times and USA Today bestsellers,
as well as Eisner Award winners.
I have the pleasure of working with
some of the most talented writers
and cartoonists around, such as
Reyna Talgameyer [assumed spelling],
Kazu Kibuishi, Mike Maihack,
Jeff Smith, and Kate Messner.
Professionally these past 10
years have been incredible.
I would like to say that one major,
essential theme of my career,
which I talk about any chance
I get, has been mentorship.
I've had several brilliant
mentors over the years,
and my growth through those
relationships has been at the core
of my personal and
professional development.
But one thing I recently
learned is that it's important
to identify both mentors
and sponsors.
Mentors usually operate
as sounding boards
and offer guidance
on an informal level.
Conversations might be more
personal and anecdotal.
Sponsors take more of a directly
professional investment in you
and use their influence to
market you to someone else,
thereby creating or furthering
an opportunity for you to move
to the next level in your career.
I mention this because this is
something I wish I had learned
early on.
I want to thank you all for coming
and for listening to
me tell my story.
While I hope it provides
some insight into one way
of building a career in publishing,
it is only one person's story.
However, it would be nice
to see publishers start a
widespread reinstitution of programs
like the one I came through
that make a point of trying
to expose more college students
and recent graduates of color
and various socioeconomic
backgrounds
to the publishing industry.
Just last week three college
students and one recent graduate
of color began participation
in what's being called the
Apprentice Program at Scholastic.
It's a variation of the Scholastic
Children's Defense Fund Fellowship.
I wish each and every
one of you the best
on your individual
publishing journeys.
I hope someday that I
have the opportunity
to hear or read all about it.
[ Applause ]
>> Kwame Alexander: Let us go
right into Q and A, question
and answers for Cassandra and Jenny.
We have a question
over here on my left.
Give me one second to get
the microphone to you.
Up front.
>> Lisa Yearwood [assumed
spelling], aspiring bestseller.
Okay, thanks for that.
I just wanted to ask you
if you could tell us some
rookie mistakes you see
with unpublished authors
in their manuscripts?
>> Jennifer Brown:
Do you want to start?
>> Cassandra Pelham:
Rookie mistakes.
I think one thing that
authors sometimes --
or aspiring authors sometimes
do is they kind of go
with what they think is
trendy and what's selling.
You know, I think you have to
write what you're passionate about,
and only you can write the story
that you've chosen to write.
So I think sometimes when
people are trying to ride a wave
and do what they think is just
selling that sometimes the passion
and authenticity doesn't
come through in the voice.
So I would just say to write what
you are passionate about and what --
you know, what you believe
in and what you truly --
what story is truly burning
a hole in your heart.
>> Jennifer Brown: I would say the
other thing that I sometimes see is
that someone is in
such a rush to send it
that they haven't fully
developed the ideas.
And I know some people
enjoy being part
of a writer's group
and others do not.
But if you have one
trusted reader who can --
who knows you well as a
writer and can really urge you
to do your very best
before you send it in.
So many things come through that
a lot of editors, myself included,
are looking for a reason
to set that one aside.
But if we can really see heart
in there and a true voice,
as Cassandra was saying, I
think that's your best shot.
>> Kwame Alexander: Jenny, can you
tell us -- give us a breakdown,
the top 10 jobs in the
children's publishing industry?
Or not top 10, but give me 10.
>> Jennifer Brown: Like
starting positions you mean or?
>> Kwame Alexander: Or just
what are some of the positions
that are available for
people who are interested
in that career, the careers?
>> Jennifer Brown: Yes.
>> Kwame Alexander: Because we
talked about -- I mean, we all --
everybody wants to write, but what
are some other sort of ways in?
>> Jennifer Brown: Well, that
was why I wanted to include some
of the other people that I've
come across who I really admire.
Because there's marketing,
sales, finance.
Maybe you're great with
people, HR, and the internships.
You know, Cassandra mentioned
the one that she came
in with and Mya came in to ours.
And I think you had exposure
in several different
departments, did you, Mya?
Or was it just editorial?
[ Inaudible ]
A lot of different things.
And then you get to try
your hand at, you know,
writing flap copy and
things like that.
But sales is another
great way, you know,
just to kind of see what your
-- how many books are out there
and how do you make
those books stand out.
And that's why I think being in
a bookstore is really helpful
or in the library, seeing what
kids ask for again and again.
You get that sort of experience
of just being with the children
who are your end readers, or the
teens who are your end readers.
>> Kwame Alexander: There is a --
there's a young lady at
Houghton Mifflin who is --
she's just responsible for Tweeting.
She just Tweets.
She's a digital -- a
social media specialist.
Just so many different
opportunities.
Next question.
Yes, over here.
>> Hello, my name is
Lorraine Rogers Jackson.
And I have a question about
being diverse in genres.
I am an author.
I have a children's series, but I
also just wrote a fantasy novel.
And what I find is that
it's met with much surprise
that I wrote in this genre.
And upon research I see
that there's not a lot
of diversity in this genre.
So what is the commitment to
not only offering diverse books,
but also offering diversity
in genres
where a lot of diversity is not?
>> Kwame Alexander: Good question.
>> Cassandra Pelham: I mean, I think
there's been a call for diversity
across all platforms, formats,
genres, you know, age groups.
You know, I think -- I could
say I did a number of things
and people might look surprised
that I -- you know what I mean?
I think it just goes
along with the territory,
of being one of one or one of a few.
So I mean I would say that there's
a commitment to it across the board
and people are looking for
diversity in all aspects.
So I wouldn't let those people
discourage you, you know,
and feel like you shouldn't be in
that space because that happens --
that could be, you know, any space.
>> Jennifer Brown: Yeah, true.
I would agree.
And I would also say that fantasy
and science fiction right now are
really experiencing of a rebirth
from what I can see at least from
the things that we're getting in
and some the things that
are resonating with teens.
Because I would even say,
you know, Victoria Aveyard is
in that fancy sci-fi world.
And we have something called
aluminate on our list,
which also kind of breaks the
barriers with sci-fi and fantasy.
So, yes, we need those
diverse voice.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> Yes, I did come today
more as an author than --
or an aspiring author than
anything else, but as I listen
to you all it is inspiring also
to hear what publishing can do.
And I'm curious, as a --
as a mid-professional,
or someone who's not
necessarily out of school
but maybe changing professions,
where does that fit in for --
is this -- if I look at
sort of agents and things
like that they seem to
be on the younger side,
those that enter the field.
How, if you're a mid-professional,
can you --
or how is it to transition
into publishing?
>> Jennifer Brown:
Well, it's interesting.
I mean, there are really -- I always
call publishing the last great
apprenticeship because it
really is so much of kind
of learning how it all
works from the inside.
But I know a number of people who
started in publishing and then went
into librarianship, and I feel like
librarianship is a wonderful way
to learn about children's literature
and also sort of feed that part
of yourself, if you will.
And, you know, Simmons was
mentioned by Jason and also by Kwame
and they have a wonderful program.
And it might be easier in
some ways to enter publishing
through that door than to actually
start with the starting salary,
which we've all lived through
on the publishing side,
or also in academic publishing.
>> Cassandra Pelham: Yeah, I
can't speak to it personally just
because I came right out
of school and I've been
at the same company
for the whole time.
But even -- there's a bunch
of publishers, big and small,
but at the same time
it's such a small world.
And I've seen people once they kind
of get in there and they, you know,
might be an assistant marketer or
an assistant publicist or, you know,
they kind of move around
and see what opens up,
because sometimes people tend to
stay in their jobs for a long time
in publishing and then
sometimes they move around a lot.
So, you know, even if
sometimes if you see a position
that might not necessarily be the
perfect one for you, you might want
to think about just kind of
getting in with that company
and then seeing the potential
for moving around a bit.
>> Kwame Alexander: Mya?
>> Hi, so I've been in publishing
for seven months at
Penguin Random House.
And I wanted to ask the question
of, I've noticed when it comes
to publishing diverse voices,
and it's only been seven months
and I've already noticed this, that
the battle really only just begins
when a manuscript is acquired.
There -- the difference between a
book doing incredibly well and doing
like so so comes down to
budget, comes down to marketing
and publicity, which books get
the most support from those areas.
It's not just editorial,
which is where I work.
And I wanted to know if there's
any advice on how to help ensure
or champion diverse books with those
mark -- with the marketing teams,
with the publicity team, with the
teams that put together the budgets,
so that books with diverse
characters have a chance
to really succeed?
Because they don't
have that support,
even if the book is fantastic, even
if it should be a Newberry winner.
No one will see it
because mark -- there's --
the teams aren't supporting
it as much.
And, of course, there's
always a reliance on numbers.
I oftentimes hear things like,
well, the numbers for this kind
of book don't -- aren't very high.
The numbers for books in fully like
Muslim universes aren't very high
so we shouldn't give the budget.
We shouldn't make the budget
too high for this book
because we don't know
if it will sell.
There's a lot of ideas of publishing
diverse books being a risk
in the publishing industry,
which makes it harder
for diverse books to succeed.
So as like an editorial assistant,
as someone who's trying to help,
and as an aspiring writer
of color, I want to know how
to combat these things so I can
make it easier for writers of color
with stories of people of color
to succeed in the industry?
It's a long question, sorry.
>> Kwame Alexander: Good question.
>> Jennifer Brown: I do
think that's changing, Mya.
I think that the [inaudible] diverse
books movement has brought a lot
of attention to this very thing.
And I think what we're starting
to see in Publishers Weekly now
with the rights announcement is
that people are spending more
on books by people of color.
I know in Knopf we
have two coming up.
One is called I Am Not Your
Perfect Mexican American Daughter.
It's a first novel by a
published poet on the adult side.
And another is The Stars Beneath
Our Feet by David Barclay Moore.
And because of the investment we
made in acquiring those books,
the sales and marketing
budgets are expected
to be commensurate with that.
So I think there is this push now to
really support those books in ways
that maybe hadn't been true before.
>> Cassandra Pelham: And for me,
I try to talk about the books
[inaudible] agents I get
in house, with my colleagues.
You know, if I'm excited about
something I'm working on I'm like,
hey, like this is in the folder.
Because we have like a folder
that we upload our mainstreams.
Hey, have you read that?
Like I really love it,
I'm excited about it.
This woman [inaudible] so I, you
know, a lot of this industry is
about relationships, and
that can be true even just
within your own little
departments and in your house.
I sometimes, you know, pull people
and say hey, like, you know,
I'm really excited about this,
like, you know, I think --
or if I hear something that's going
on in the world and on the Internet
or something, and I'm like, hey,
this book sounds like, you know,
we may be able to push it, you know,
because this thing
is going on online.
So, yes, and sometimes
it can be a --
you know, a bit of a
struggle for the --
if you're at a company that everyone
allocates their marketing dollars
in different ways, but sometimes
it -- you know, you just have to --
it gets a little competitive so I
just try to talk about the books
that I'm -- that I'm excited
about and that I'm working
on any chance I get because there's
no one else there that's going
to advocate as much
as I am for that book
in house, like in my department.
>> Kwame Alexander:
So another way to look
at it is can you really afford
to wait for the marketing staff
to figure out how to market you.
And the answer is no, we cannot.
And which is why what Jason
said, what Jenny said,
what Cassandra said, is
so important in terms
of everyone learning the
business side of publishing,
because you really have to --
you really have to know
how to market yourself
and how to promote yourself.
And so I just had a novel come
out on April 5 and I told one
of my publicists, I said, look,
let's send out a press release
to the Rickey Smiley Morning Show.
And she was like, who's
Rickey Smiley [laughter]?
And I was like, yeah,
well that makes sense.
And so if we sort of wait on
people to figure things out --
we got to operate on two fronts.
We have to sort of
simultaneously educate and we have
to sort of do our own thing.
Like that never stops.
As a writer you constantly have to
promote yourself and figure out ways
to get your book into
the marketplace.
That's just my aside.
The next question.
Yes, right here in the middle.
>> Hi, my name is Rene
Gervais [assumed spelling].
And I've heard a lot of
rumors about the slush pile.
And I just want to know like
how much hope is in slush
if you're not agented and not
solicited, how much hope is there
in just submitting your work?
>> Cassandra Pelham: Well,
we do read the unsolicited,
unagented manuscripts.
Well, everyone has
a different policy
so I won't say that, you know.
But every -- even every imprint
within Scholastic has
a different policy.
When I was an intern it was my job
to go through the pile and read.
But some gems have come
out of the slush pile.
I believe The Skin I'm
In by Sharon Draper came
out of the slush pile, and so did --
>> Jennifer Brown:
Is it Sharon Slate?
>> Cassandra Pelham: I'm
sorry, Sharon Slate, yes.
Sorry. And Shadow Shaper by
Daniel Jose Older also came
out of the slush pile.
So there is a hope, you know, I
can't give you an equation for it,
but I think there is some.
>> Jennifer Brown: We also
read some of the slush.
I will say, you know, when
I was an editorial assistant
at Harper we found If You Give
a Mouse a Cookie, but it was one
of 12,000 unsolicited manuscripts.
So if you can, try to get
to an SCBWI conference.
You'll meet agents.
You'll meet other writers who
can give you their experiences
in submitting manuscripts.
I just think they are such a
font of information, and it --
even if you just do the one
on one critiques you'll meet
with either an agent or an
editor and they'll often --
you know, if they see promise there,
they'll say send me your
revision or, you know,
send me the whole thing
when I'm back at my desk.
So it's just such a great, again as
Kwame was saying, a way to network
and make sure that your is read.
>> Kwame Alexander: And so
the website is scbwi.org.
And it's an international
organization.
They have two national
conferences, one in February
in New York and one in August in LA.
So the August one is apparently
obviously coming up soon
and you can still register for that.
But there's a local chapter.
There's a -- I know there's
a Norther Virginia chapter.
[ Inaudible ]
Mid-Atlantic, that's what
it's called, Mid-Atlantic,
and their conference is
in October at [inaudible]
at Holiday Inn in [inaudible].
And that's a great place for you all
to start, to start at the regional
and then go to the national level.
There's a Children's Book Guild in
Washington, D.C. The Washington --
the D.C. Children's -- or the
Children's Book Guild of Washington,
D.C., and that's a great place
because they have monthly sessions
where they bring in
speakers like Jason Reynolds
and [inaudible] writers
and publishers
who are already doing --
who are doing this work.
And you get to interact and
network with other writers as well.
Last question.
Yes.
>> Hi, I write YA novels
and verse and I just wanted
to get any comments --
or hear any comments
on the future of that genre.
>> Jennifer Brown: Well,
thanks to people Jackie
and Kwame I think it's
in very good shape.
Keep going.
>> Kwame Alexander: Actually,
we have time for a few
more questions I'm told.
How cool is that?
Yes [inaudible].
[ Inaudible ]
>> Here I am, okay, there I go.
I'm a high school English
teacher and, of course,
on that level there really
isn't a place for mentorship.
So how could I go about, I guess,
acquiring a mentor such as,
you know, a Kwame Alexander or,
you know -- you know, do I --
on what level -- I don't
want to stalk anybody or --
but I always have business cards on
me so how do I maneuver that field?
>> Cassandra Pelham: Kwame, how
do you [inaudible] [laughter]?
>> Kwame Alexander: What a
great question [laughter].
So here's the short answer to that.
I remember Nikki Giovanni telling
me about a similar situation
where somebody was
looking for a mentor.
She's was like, you
don't look for a mentor.
A mentor finds you.
And how does a mentor find you?
A mentor finds you by you
putting yourself in a situation.
And so Nikki called Tony
Medina, she called me,
she called a few other people,
and she said I'm doing a book
and it's 100 best African
American poems of all time.
And I need some help.
I need you all to go out
and find the younger poets.
Who do you suggest?
There was no money.
There was no accolades.
There was no name on the cover.
She was like, I want you to do
the work and we were like, yeah,
all right, and we all did the work
and we all found poets that we knew
and loved and could recommend.
You do that enough, by default
someone becomes your mentor
because you're putting in the work.
Mentor is really about
you doing the work.
It's not necessarily about
someone doing the work for you.
It's about you doing
the work and through
that relationship they're
providing you guidance and direction
and support and encouragement.
So, you know, I got a
couple projects if you want
to help me on [laughter].
But that's my answer to it.
I don't know, do you have
anything to offer, Jenny,
about that -- about mentorship?
>> Jennifer Brown: I you're right
about the mentor finding you.
You know, it's putting yourself in
those places where you're exposed
to the people who can really
impart something to you.
I mean, I mentioned Bill, and Bill
was such a mentor to so many people
that they -- when he passed away and
left some money to the Association
of Library Services to Children they
established an evaluation program
for young librarians, or
not even young librarians,
but people who were just
starting in their library careers,
to teach them how to evaluate.
And they had people like Deb
Taylor, who's been the head
of the [inaudible] Committee and
teaching how to evaluate nonfiction.
And just recently I will say
that the CSK Committee
approached [inaudible]
about sending two librarians
into the Bill Moore
seminar, sponsoring them.
And I think those, you know, people
who mentor also begat other mentors.
So I think there's an opportunity by
going to some of the author events
at CBWI, meeting those agents
and editors and designers
who you feel can really teach you
something and just staying in touch
and letting that develop.
>> Cassandra Pelham: And I will
say that I have a couple of mentors
that don't even know that they're
my mentors, because I am just trying
to absorb everything that I can
from them when I see them speak
or in conversation, or
even on social media
if you follow the people who you
really admire and look up to.
Just trying to absorb and
learn from just every --
you know, when you see
people speak, just every bit
of kernel of wisdom that you can.
And, I mean, I think that's
a great way to learn, too.
>> Kwame Alexander: I have a friend
who, she's a brilliant writer,
when she was starting out and I
would call and I would say, look,
I'm going doing an anthology,
I need a 20 page story.
Can you send it to
me in three weeks?
And she did it.
I never did the anthology.
A year later, let's write a
collaborative novel together.
You write the first 100
pages, I'll do the next.
She wrote 100 pages, I
gave her notes on it.
I never wrote my 100 pages.
Then I did a writer's retreat and
invited her and said we're going
to do -- we're going to
work on a project together
and had a great time at
the writer's retreat.
And the project never happened.
We had sort of interaction
and working on stuff,
but it never came to fruition.
She just got a two book
deal with HarperCollins.
And it's because over the
course of four years that she
and I had established this sort
of connection and interaction,
and so she was the benefit
of whatever [inaudible]
of knowledge I had and access,
and she put in the work.
But if she had turned down
-- if she had not said yes,
if she had not walked through
that door that first time,
maybe it wouldn't have
happened in that manner.
And so I think you just -- if you
want to find a mentor you got to --
you got to walk through doors.
You got to put yourself
in that space.
Right, Jenny?
>> Jennifer Brown: Right, Kwame.
>> Kwame Alexander: Yeah.
Yes, right here.
She's had her hand up so long.
>> My name is Faye
Montgomery [assumed spelling]
and I'm an aspiring graphic novelist
as well as an intern at MacMillan
and North Hampton Press
for the summer.
So my question for you ladies is,
how is the graphic novel
publishing sector different
from publishing a work of
prose or a picture book?
>> Cassandra Pelham: Do
you mean editorially or?
>> Everything, because it
seems that it's relatively new.
I mean, comics have been around
for much longer and I'm wondering
about the editorial
side, the publicity side,
anything you have to share.
>> Cassandra Pelham: Well, comics
are -- it's kind of its own thing,
but at the same time at Scholastic
we publish comics as trade books.
So we do publicize and market
them as children's trade books,
much in the same way that, we know,
we send them out to the
same reviewers and we --
you know, but there are -- you
know, they have a lot of comic shows
that we can physically target,
like the Comic Con, San Diego,
New York are the major ones.
There's some smaller shows
like Emerald City Comic
Con [inaudible] festivals
that get a lot of pick up.
So I think the cool thing about
doing comics at a major publisher is
that you kind of get the best of
both worlds in that it's a comic
and it's a graphic novel,
but it's also being marketed
in the larger scheme of the list.
>> Jennifer Brown: Well,
and I would say, you know,
some of us are still learning
how to do it, you know,
without putting Penguin Random
House on the spot, but you know,
we've had some nice
hits like Roller Girl.
And, you know, I just acquired one.
That was the first thing I
acquired when I got there
and it's called Rickety
Stitch and it's a trilogy
and it's two guys who've been
friends since second grade
and they have a whole
comics following online.
But can we translate
that to the marketplace?
That's going to be
a question for us.
But where you are,
actually at MacMillan,
for a second you have a
font of information there
with Mark Siegel and his team.
So I think we're all
still trying to figure it
out because the kids have
gotten there faster than we did,
and librarians and booksellers are
on board, and now we have to figure
out how to get that to them.
>> Cassandra Pelham: And
I will say that part of --
to have the equivalent of
self-publishing or, you know,
using the Internet
to further your craft
as web comics have been huge for,
you know, kind of getting out there,
putting your work online,
having work to show.
Because I'm always -- I'm on
Tumblr, I'm on web comic sites,
I'm always looking at Instagram.
You know, I sign up people
from a variety of ways.
So I would encourage you
to think about that, too.
>> [inaudible] from -- how was --
do you just edit the manuscript
or you also look at
like the panels and?
>> Cassandra Pelham: Yes, so most
of the graphic novels I've edited
it's the same person doing both
writing and illustrating.
I only have a couple projects
where it's more than one person.
So you are definitely looking
at it as a whole, the words
and the artwork, they
tell the story together.
So I've kind of -- it's almost like
I had to learn to be an art director
in a way as well as an
editor, because it doesn't --
it doesn't work without, you
know, looking at both as a whole.
But, you know, my editorial
letters are, you know,
similar to my [inaudible]
about characters
and plot and theme and pacing.
You know, so, you know,
it's different
in some ways and the same in others.
>> Jennifer Brown: I think
the biggest difference
that I've noticed is
that it's important
to take those emotional
moments in a graphic novel,
too, and give that space.
You know, I think one of
the things that I've seen is
that sometimes there's a tendency
to have the pacing be
the same throughout,
and just giving those moments
where you really give
say a four panel stretch
for an emotional moment or
connection between two characters,
just thinking through where do
you want that emphasis to be.
>> Kwame Alexander: Over here.
>> My question has a little
bit to do with being --
not being author illustrator as
well and how to insert the diversity
or the multicultural aspect to that.
If you write a universal story and
you don't want to have, you know,
animals as your characters, can you
put in as an art note or something,
or you in your query,
like I would like this
to not default to a white character.
You know, I want this --
if you don't pick names
like Gracelyn [assumed
spelling], you know, Ting and Ling.
I mean, how else do you indicate
that this is a universal story,
but I want my characters to
reflect multicultural America?
>> Cassandra Pelham: I think
you would say just that.
You know, I think -- I think
you would just say that.
I don't think there's anything
wrong with saying that.
[ Inaudible ]
Yeah, or in the -- in the manuscript
if you put it in parenthesis.
If you're writing a picture
book or a graphic novel
and to just make it clear what
your vision is for you characters.
I think that's completely
reasonable and helpful.
You know, because you don't want
to get down the line and, you know,
have -- there's been
a misunderstanding --
you know, a misunderstanding
or a miscommunication
or the editor has a
different vision than you,
or thought that you had a
vision that you didn't have.
So I think just being as clear
and upfront as you can be is --
>> Kwame Alexander: And
so I'll add to that.
That sounds good [laughter].
But it doesn't always
work like that,
and you're not always
necessarily thinking like that.
So I wrote a book about a
rooster that stars in a jazz band
with Duck Ellington and Mules Davis.
So it's animals and so I didn't put
in my query letter or in my contract
that the animals had to be black.
I wasn't thinking like that.
But when I got illustrations back
the illustrator had inserted a
farmer in the book and the
farmer defaulted to white,
which is a whole other thing because
when you think about the history
of jazz musicians and
their relationship
with their white managers and
agents, that's a whole other thing.
I'm getting to deep for you all.
So I said to the publisher,
nah, not so much.
And he said, no, we like it.
And I said, nah, not so much,
we're not going to do that.
Let's take the farmer out.
And so it's just, I mean,
you just got to say it.
You just got to say it.
And you got to stick
-- you got to be --
you got to be persistent and you
got to stick to your guns, you know,
if it's not in the contract
or the query letter.
Last question.
>> Thank you.
My name is [inaudible] and I'm a
high school English instructor,
but I wanted to comment
on mentorship.
And I think finding a mentor
there's a process of giving.
I have been promoting
authors for about 15 years
and my first author was
a Random House author.
And I called Random House and
told them there's this new book,
I have the review copy, and I
want to get in touch this author.
I would like to promote
her, but I don't --
I'm not asking for anything.
I'm doing it for the
families in my community.
Through that escalated more
authors, more connections.
I have a group of authors
now that are not just people
that I have helped,
but their friends.
I never knew that I would
create that but these are people
who would definitely
help me if I needed it.
So I think -- I mean,
that's an isolated story,
but I think that there
is a process of giving
if you are seeking mentorship.
So you have to give a little bit
of yourself in any way you can.
My question really quickly is,
what is trending amongst the
teen population as far as writing
and what they're reading?
Is it style of writing
or is it plot?
I've asked my teens what
do you prefer, a good plot
or an excellent --
or a different style
of writing that you can relate to?
And a lot of them are
sort of 50 50 so I'd
like to get comments
to see what you think.
>> Cassandra Pelham: I wouldn't say
that it's one or the other either.
I mean, I think if [inaudible]
you know, I think it just depends
on the preference of the reader.
I think I tend to gravitate
toward character driven stories.
I love a really well-developed
character
that I emotionally connect to,
and then get into their world
and into their plate and
what's going on with them.
Some people just like that fast,
you know, plot driven, you know,
what's happening, how
you getting there?
Okay, it happened, oh my gosh.
You know, so I think it just depends
on the preference of the reader.
I wouldn't -- I haven't heard of a
trend regarding that sort of thing
>> Jennifer Brown: I would agree.
I think, you know, if I think
about myself as a reader
and the kids I've taught,
they read really widely.
So they would read, you
know, The Babysitters Club
and they would also read,
you know, Newberry winners.
And so I think that's
also true of teens.
With [inaudible] it's
been interesting
because it is the sci-fi, very plot
driven, but there's also this kind
of moral question at its center so
you kind of get pulled into the plot
but you end up doing some deeper
thinking around, you know,
what is my responsibility
to my community
and how do I make a
difference as an individual even
if it means going against
everybody else.
So I think that teens are
really keyed into those kinds
of searching questions as they're
making sense of who they are
as they're becoming adults.
And I think they can read a
wide range of things to try
to answer those questions
for themselves.
>> Kwame Alexander: Okay, we're
going to take a five minute break
and come back for the
real star who just arrive.
Please let's give a
round of applause
for Jennifer Brown
and Cassandra Pelham.
[ Applause ]
Four minutes and 49 seconds left.
We have about a two minute
warning please, find your way.
All right, what a full day.
But it ain't over.
It ain't over.
All right, so I'm going to
point to a side of the room
and just tell me -- recap one
thing we've learned today,
something practical
we can take home.
Over here, raise your
hand, who's got it?
Right here, yes?
[ Inaudible ]
Interesting, I love that.
Over here.
Yes, in the back.
[ Inaudible ]
Well you all heard that.
Nikki, they were asking about
how do you find a mentor.
You don't find a mentor,
a mentor finds you.
You got to put in the work.
Over here, yes?
No, anybody?
Yes?
[ Inaudible ]
Excellent, excellent.
That's good stuff.
Well, speaking of mentors,
there's a --
there are a few mentors
of mine in the room,
and they don't even know it.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I'd like to quickly bring
up to the stage the Coretta Scott
King John Steptoe Award winner
from 2015, Jason Reynolds.
Come on up, Jason.
[ Applause ]
And we are getting a little
bit [inaudible] recognize him.
And, Jason, so if you could imagine
for a second that this is the Own,
Oprah's channel, and Jay Z has
just filmed his master class,
and Sidney Poitier
has done his and --
>> Jason Reynolds: And
Jamie Fox there, too?
>> Kwame Alexander: And
Jamie Fox had a good one.
And now Anya has old me
I've got three minutes.
>> Jason Reynolds: All right.
>> Kwame Alexander: Maybe
two and a half minutes max.
What's your master class?
Give it to us.
>> Jason Reynolds:
Process before progress.
Process before progress.
I think in our industry, and as
writers in general, I think so many
of us want what we want, right.
Everybody thinks that
they have the [inaudible],
but the American classic, but no
one is willing to go through all
of the things that it takes to
actually create something that is --
so we had this discussion about
-- I've been here the whole time,
about like what about
the slush pile.
And what really nice editors
won't say is that a lot of stuff
in the slush pile is
slush [laughter].
Right? Because they're very -- there
are very few people who are willing
to really put in the work, right.
Kwame tells you that his book was
rejected a whole bunch of times,
but he didn't tell you how
many times he wrote the book.
Right? So I think these
are the things,
there's this process
before progress.
The industry is slow,
period, first of all.
The slowest of all the industries,
the arts media industries.
But what also has to happen is the
amount of time they take editing
and critiquing and trying
to figure out your book,
you have to take twice as long
writing it, figuring it out,
nailing your voice, your style,
breaking rules, learning the rules,
breaking them again, finding a
mentor, listening to your mentor,
not listening to your mentor, right.
All of the things, right, and
I think that would be sort
of my [inaudible] master
class, process first.
>> Kwame Alexander: Jason Reynolds
has written When I Was the Greatest,
well before that, My Name is Jason.
>> Jason Reynolds: Mine too.
>> Kwame Alexander: Mine too.
When I Was the Greatest, The Boy in
the Black Suit, All American Boys,
As Brave As You, should have
an are on the end of it,
but we're not going to say that.
Your mother says that?
>> Jason Reynolds: Yeah, my mother,
she's like you mean
as brave as you are.
No, I don't mean as
brave as you are.
As Brave As You is
the name of the book.
>> Kwame Alexander: So [laughter].
>> Jason Reynolds: Teachers, right?
>> Kwame Alexander: He graduated --
he graduated from the
University of Maryland.
He has a couple of books
coming out every year.
He's firmly entrenched in YA
and now middle grade novels.
I met him at a poetry slam that Dr.
Carol Hardy [assumed spelling] put
on at the College of William
and Mary in 19 or 2000 --
>> Jason Reynolds: Oh
long time, 15, 16, 17.
>> Kwame Alexander: And
he won the poetry slam.
And so we're just grateful
that you are here.
>> Jason Reynolds: Thank you.
>> Kwame Alexander:
Ladies and gentlemen,
Jason Reynolds [applause].
>> Jason Reynolds: Thank you.
I will say real quick, just
really, really, really short,
I will say this, everybody who knows
me or anyone who knows me knows
that I've -- they're like oh,
Jason's been around
like three years.
So when we talk about
process before progress,
Jason's been in the
industry for 13 1/2 years,
signed in the industry
for 13 1/2 years.
And you all are just
learning about me now.
Process before progress.
[ Applause ]
>> Kwame Alexander: Jason is one
of the founding member inspirers --
members, advisors, supporters,
encouragers of we need
diverse books, which is along
with the center for poetry
and literature of the Library
of Congress, the main
sponsor of this here event.
Let's find out a little bit about we
need diverse movements via a video.
Please pay attention
to the monitors.
>> HI, I'm Ellen Oh.
>> My name is Dhonielle Clayton.
>> And I started We Need Diverse
Books with a bunch of people
who really care about
diversity in the industry
because not enough kids get
to see themselves represented
in the books that we read everyday.
And not seeing yourself is like
being told that you don't exist.
>> We Need Diverse Books
is so important and crucial
because every kid deserves to
be the hero of their own story.
>> And when I was a kid I read a lot
of books that did not have anyone
that looked anything like myself.
>> As a child of mixed race I
did not see myself in books.
>> And I didn't get to see any sort
of queer characters until I was 19
or 20 years old, which is
far too late in the game.
>> My first book with
a gay character,
there was a random gay kiss at one
point in the story and I was ashamed
for reading the story because
I thought everyone would know
that I was reading a gay book.
>> As a teenager there
were not any books
about young adults who were black.
>> I would agree with that.
I did not have that at all.
So I am so happy that your
books exists and I want more.
>> I looked everywhere for a
book with a Latina character
and I couldn't find one anywhere.
And it was all that
I wanted as a child.
>> I didn't see any characters
that looked like me or my husband,
or what my daughter looks like.
>> I didn't grow up with any trans
kids in middle grade literature.
To see yourself, and to see people
like you, who are facing issues
like you in books is life-changing.
>> It's important for me to
write books where dealing
with mental health issues
is normalized and seen
as something that isn't shameful.
>> I write stories for every kid who
has ever had to show up at school
with a doctor's note in their bag
dreading the moment that they have
to pull it out and
pass it to a teacher.
>> I am the mother
of biracial children.
I write for everyone.
>> I write gay characters in my
books because I want the guys
who used to shove me into lockers,
I want those guys to be able to
look at a queer character and root
for him, and root for
her to win in the story.
>> I want to make sure that
everyone is included in my stories.
>> And I think what
novels do so well is
that they give us the context
that makes us understand
that people are people,
love is love,
lives are lives, teens are teens.
>> And I really just wanted to show
that any girl can be in every girl.
>> I am thinking of me as a child
and I'm thinking of all of you guys,
and all the people
that you want to see.
>> To all the young people out there
who are growing up in communities
that are seen as colorful
communities or communities
that are seen as undesirable,
my books are to serve as
a symbol and a way for you
to feel a little less
ashamed of where you're from.
>> You're going to have
a lot of people tell you
that you're not enough,
or you're too much.
You're enough, and
your story matters.
>> No matter who you are today,
or tomorrow, or the next day,
we are all part of the same thing.
>> We want it to be better
for you than it's been for us.
Like, not in the future,
but like, literally today.
>> Now.
>> Like right this minute.
>> No matter who you
are or how you identify,
what you believe in
or how you were born,
how you were raised, no matter who
you are really, I write for you.
>> Books can change the world,
just like you can change the world.
And we want you to know
that we create for you.
We write for you, so that you
can go out and change the world.
>> We are here to tell your stories.
>> And everyone else's too.
>> We write for you.
>> That's why we write for you.
>> I write for you.
>> That's why I write for you.
>> That's why I write for you.
>> That's why we write for you.
>> We write for you.
>> And I write for you.
>> We write for you.
>> And I write for you.
>> We write for you.
>> I write for all of us.
[ Applause ]
>> Kwame Alexander: The founder
of We Need Diverse
Books, Ellen Oh, is here.
Please stand up, Ellen.
[ Applause ]
When I won the Newbery I texted her.
When I won the Newbery I --
[ Applause ]
I texted her and she texted me when
I was trying to figure out how much
to charge a school
for a school visit.
I texted her and she texted me.
Whenever I am sort of dealing
with the woes and the wonders
of children's book
publishing I text her.
Jacqueline Woodson is the new
Young People's Poet Laureate
and the 2014 National
Book Award winner
for Brown Girl Dreaming,
her memoir in verse.
The book also received the Newbery
honor, the NAACP Image Award,
the Sibert Honor for
Non-Fiction, and was short-listed
for the LA Times Book Prize.
She's the author of 30 books
for young adults, middle graders
and children, and won many awards.
She's a four time Newbery
Honor winner,
and three time National
Book Award finalist,
two time Coretta Scott
King Award winner.
Her books include, The Other Side,
Each Kindness, Beneath a Meth Moon,
the [inaudible] honor book,
Coming On Home Soon, Feathers,
and Miracles Boys, which
received the LA Times Book Prize
and was adapted into a
miniseries by Spike Lee.
She's also the recipient of
the Margaret A. Edwards Award
for lifetime achievement
for her contributions
to young adult literature,
the winner of the Jane
Adams Children's Book Award,
and was the 2013 United
States nominee
for the Hans Christian
Anderson Award.
She lives with her
family in Brooklyn,
New York where she often has
dinner parties and invites writers
and we fry fish and we drink,
and she's just a wonderful,
wonderful spirit.
And today she is going to sort
of bring us home and share
with us what it's like
to be a legend who's
like still living [laughter], to
be a mentor to so many writers.
To be a black woman who has
succeeded against all odds,
like overcome challenges.
To be my friend and to be someone
that I admire tremendously.
Please welcome Jacqueline Woodson.
[ Applause ]
>> Jacqueline Woodson:
Thanks, Kwame.
Oh man, this is the kind of
room you dream of being in.
I feel like Kwame and
Jason and Chris Myers,
who we've decided cannot bread the
fish anymore [laughter], [inaudible]
and we're just constantly in
rooms talking and planning
and scheming and, you
know, all of the people
from We Need Diverse Books.
I feel like we're trying to
do this work every single day
to get the room to look like this,
and to get the publishing houses
to look like this,
and to get our body
of literature to look like this.
So I'm so grateful for
all of you all showing
up and being in the room.
I got a call this morning.
I was thinking of this, you
know, life happens, right.
You wake up and you're trying to
do your work and you're on deadline
or you're not on deadline and
things just constantly happen.
So I was on the train this morning
and I got an e-mail from a woman
at Brigham Young University.
And she was saying -- she was saying
that she was putting together this
and thought -- she was putting
together a book about literature
and children's psychology, and
it went on and on, and she wanted
to know if I would contribute to it.
And it came through my
publicist and she said,
how should we respond,
do you want to do this?
And I said, why don't
you just forward it me.
So she forwarded it
to me and I said --
I wrote Thorma [assumed spelling]
back and I said, you know,
I've published more than 30 books.
I've won a ton of awards.
I've been writing for
more than 25 years
and I have never once been invited
to Brigham Young University.
And I said, it could be because
I'm writing as someone who is out.
It could be that I'm writing as
someone who is out as a black woman.
Or it could be that my literature
is just not respected by this --
by the children's literature
program at Brigham Young University,
and I think a lot of you know
it's a Mormon University.
But whatever the reason is I feel
like historically I've been silenced
by your university and, as a result,
I don't want to have
my name attached to it.
And I think one thing that
happens a lot for writers is
that there are places,
especially for writers of color,
for queer writers, where we
get silenced and we get banned
and our literature gets rejected by
some reason because world that is
in that position of power for
deciding how that work is going
to be represented are not in the
world does not understand the work
that we're trying to
put into the world,
or finds that it might be
destructive to the world.
Or whatever the reason is,
it can be a dangerous place
when you don't have
your people behind you,
when you don't have people
in a room who are saying,
I get what you're saying,
it's important,
it's valid, it needs to be here.
The writer, Archer Lord,
said that we should wake
up knowing we have work to
do and go to bed knowing
that we've done our work.
And even though writers like us
have been writing for many years
and writing many books,
there's still so many stories
that go untold every day, and
there's such an importance
for those stories to
be in the world.
So I completely agree with Jason.
I think that those
stories have to be written
and rewritten and rewritten.
I rewrote Brown Girl Dreaming 31
times before it's the book that's
out there.
It took me 3 1/2 years.
[ Applause ]
And it is so much about the
process and processing everything.
As writers we walk
through the room --
we walk through the world and it
feels like our skin is pulled back
and we're taking all the stuff
in, everything that happens
to us every day, the way
people look at us, the way --
the things people say, the e-mails
we get, the things our children say
and don't say, and we take
it in and then we process it
and we put it back out
into the world in some way
that we can hopefully better
understand it ourselves.
I always say I write because
I have all these questions,
not because I have answers.
And the writing process
helps me figure it out.
I remember reading Nikki
Giovanni's book Knoxville,
which started out as a poem
and then became a picture book.
And it was the story of being
in Knoxville in the summer
and the food you ate, and it
was a very ordinary moment put
on the page and made extraordinary.
And that's what our lives
are, as people of color,
as women, as queer people.
Our lives seem very ordinary to us.
The fact that we are
still here and able
to tell our stories
is extraordinary.
And that's why those stories need to
be on the page, for our daughters,
for our sisters, for our
sons, for our ancestors
who weren't even allowed
to read and write.
We have a right to
tell those stories.
And I think the -- as Audrey
[assumed spelling] said again,
the machine is going to try to
grind us into the ground, right.
Every day someone's going to
say your story is not valid,
or they're going to say we
already published some story
like that written by someone
who does not look like you,
or they're going to say it's not
good enough, or your family is going
to say don't be putting our
business out into the world.
But whatever it is there are going
to be these constant silencers.
So I've known I wanted to be a
writer since I was seven years old.
My family was part of
the great migration.
My mom came from Greenville, South
Carolina to Brooklyn, New York
and settled us in this section
of Brooklyn called Bushwick.
And writing was not an option.
My mom didn't have this idea
that I was going to bring --
she was going to bring four
children to New York City
so that one kid aspired
to be an artist.
You know, you were supposed
to aspire to get a job
and get the hell out of her house.
And so when I was saying
that I wanted to be a writer,
I wanted to be a writer, my mother
and grandmother didn't
understand that,
but I knew that writing
was something
that I wanted to do no matter what.
And I think when you
look at the writers
who do eventually become
household names it's
because they're writing
no matter what.
They're writing whether or
not someone publishes them.
They're writing whether or
not they get the good reviews.
They're writing whether or not
there are trolls on the Internet,
you know, saying mean
things about their book.
They're writing because they have
to write and because they have
to put their stories out into
the world and they have to --
this is their power in the world.
And so I think we don't just write,
we kind of bleed that writing.
And so when I first
started writing I took --
I majored in English in college.
I took a whole bunch
of writing courses.
I still take writing classes.
If there's a writer I love, I find
out where they're teaching and I sit
in on their class just because
there's always something I can learn
about the process of writing.
When I was a kid I was really
afraid of poetry, so I --
as an adult I had to kind of
work through that and really read
and reread poetry and study poets
and find the poets who I understood
and just crack that code of poetry
because I didn't want
that fear to silence me.
And I think so often it is
our fears that silence us
and keep us from writing.
And I think it's asking ourselves
the question, what do we want to say
and what do we want to
change and how do we want
to change it through our words?
And so with writing for children,
you know, it's that slippery slope.
You can't be didactic.
You -- I would say I write --
I don't write to teach,
I write to learn.
If I wanted to teach
I'd write textbooks.
So I think sometimes people go
and think I'm going to write
for young people because
I want to teach them this
or I want to show them that.
And kids read for the
same reason we read,
they read to hear a great story.
And through that great
story they learn empathy.
They learn understanding,
and they learn how
to -- they become empowered.
But the first step of
that writing is getting
that good story on the page.
And then after taking -- I
took those writing classes
and I finally found a publisher
at Bantam Doubleday Dell,
which is now Random House,
and worked with Wendy Lamb,
who was queen of the slush pile.
She's the one who found
Christopher Paul Curtis and lots
of other great writers and
then eventually came to work --
came to write at Penguin where I've
been working with the same editor
for 14 years now, which
is kind of crazy.
But -- and who lets me write
basically what I want to write,
but I write what I
care deeply about,
and I care deeply about
young people.
As WNDB talks about seeing images
of themselves in the world,
because for me as a child
those images were absent.
You had to look long and hard
to find reflections of yourself.
Not only reflections of yourself,
but reflections of yourself
that were written by
people who look like you.
There were lots of books that
were written by white folks
about black people, but
there -- I couldn't --
I had a hard time finding
books where the --
where I could trace the book to
an African American female author.
So it was really important to me.
And it was a journey.
So I am going to read a short
section from my adult book,
and I'm not leaving the
world of children's books
for good, I'm coming back.
But I was thinking in terms of what
our stories are and the importance
of putting those stories
on the page.
This book is a biography
of the neighborhood I grew
up, which is Bushwick.
So Bushwick -- so all the
Bushwick stuff is true,
and then fictive element of
it are the four young women
who are walking through
this real place.
And I think with writing you're
constantly breaking the rules.
So I think it's so important to
read across genre, to read poetry
and fiction, to read
children's books and adult books,
because you create --
each time a writer sits
down to create a book you're telling
a new story and you're telling it
in a way that only you
can tell that story.
So, unfortunately, with publishers
sometimes they can be lazy
so they want to see
how that book is going
to have an impact on the world.
So you can't say, well, remember
[inaudible] Between the World
and Me, or remember Claude McKay's
Manchild in the Promised Land
or Alice Walker's Color Purple.
And then they go, oh yes, so
you're writing a vignette.
Oh yes, so you're writing
about that experience.
So you have to have some kind
of mirror, but you also have
to have this original,
original story.
So --
Sorry. This is Kwame's copy of the
book that I promised to bring him,
so I didn't want to dog ear it
because then he would think
I was giving him some used
stuff [laughter].
[ Inaudible ]
You have yours.
Oh man, sorry, this is Jason's
copy of my book but [laughter].
I imagine the women my father
brought home, taking a place
until my mother returned.
Each shh, my kids are sleeping.
Each, oh Lord, look at your
precious babies, brought her closer.
I lay in bed and listened as
the clink of ice in glasses
and the hush laughter gave
way to size and moans.
I imagined waking up with a
new woman, her hair in curlers,
holding her robe closed with one
hand, asking if I wanted pancakes
or cereal, scouring the cabinets for
the last of the Aunt Jemima syrup,
sprinkling a bit of cinnamon
and sugar when there was none.
I imagined strong, sure hands
pulling my hair into tight cornrows,
telling my brother to take his thumb
out of his mouth, kissing my father
on the lips as he headed
off to work.
I imagined the four of us at the
kitchen table, the thick stink
of boiling chitins gone, replaced
by hot sauce and white rice
and the woman who came to stay
until my mother returned asking
if I wanted a little or a lot.
Years later I would tell this to
Sister Sonja [assumed spelling],
wanting her to know that I had
dreamed our family whole again,
that I had believed
wholeness was on its way.
In a jar on the counter of Poncho
Store there were pickled pigs' feet,
and he'd scoop up -- that he
would scoop out into brown paper.
When you said I want
to choose my own,
Poncho said no choosing, I choose.
His old man eyes moving
over your body,
and if you were hungry
enough you let him.
I imagined the four of us,
brother, father, new woman, me,
sucking the last of the pickled
meat from the pig's foot bone,
wrapping the cartilage and
bone back into the brown paper,
washing it down with Dr. Pepper.
Pork rinds were packaged
and sold for 15 cents
with hot sauce sprinkled
into a plastic bag.
You almost had a meal.
My brother ate his without the
sauce, sometimes adding more salt.
On good days our father took us
around the corner and let us buy ham
and cheese heroes, the boiled ham
cut into thin slices and layered
over Italian bread already
spread thick with Mayo.
Some days my brother preferred
the square cuts of spiced ham
with its tiny speckles of
white fat, that was before.
The woman who came didn't tiptoe
through our house in the night,
didn't ask for just a taste
when my offered her whiskey,
didn't sit with us eating
pig's feet and spiced ham.
She came by way of the Nation
of Islam, her head wrapped,
her dark dress draping
down below her ankles.
She said my name is Sister
Loretta, her Bible --
her body a temple covered and
far away from my father's.
Her thin face free of
swine filled makeup
with which unenlightened
women painted their faces.
She said, I know how
amazing and lovely I am.
When she looked down at us
and smiled her dark face broke
into something open and
hungry and beautiful.
She said your father is
ready to change his life.
She said, the food you're
eating is the white devil's plan
to kill our people.
She came into our apartment
on a Sunday morning pulling
down dusty pots and pans from the
cabinet to wash in warm soapy water,
humming slowly as she worked.
My father at the table
reading from the Koran,
a watery Brooklyn sunlight
falling over the pages.
Her hands were large and moved
as thought they had always
known our tiny kitchen,
with its yellowing sink and
peeling linoleum counter.
I watched them, imagining they were
my mothers, and that they were again
in Sweet Grove with our broken --
and that we were again
in Sweet Grove
with our broken stove
and dusty bookshelves.
I sat in the kitchen
doorway, my knees pulled
up to my chin, eyes
lifted toward her.
Her breasts were heavy
beneath the dark dress,
but she wasn't a heavy woman.
Still, her body seemed to hold
promises of curves, of the soft
and deep spaces I was just
beginning to understand.
One day I'd have full
breast, hips, and large hands.
One day my body would tell the
world stories beneath the fabric
of my clothes.
So one thing, when I was writing
Another Brooklyn I realized
that so many of the
stories on the page --
in the world are not always
representative of the kind
of intricacies of our growing up.
I always say, you know, especially
in families of color, you know,
you throw a stone and you
hit the uncle in prison.
You throw another stone and
you hit the poor relatives.
Or they throw a stone and hit
you, their poor relatives.
But there are all these nuances to
our community, all these stories
that have not been told because
of this layer of shame to them.
And I think that if we tell
those stories with the level
of deep respect that we have, I'm
thinking of When I Was the Greatest,
Jason's book, and the first time
reading that and thinking, wow,
he's nailing all of this.
He's telling the truth.
And for fiction that's the first
point that we need to bring
to the page, is that
deep and important truth
and then the rest follows.
So I'm happy to be here
in the room with you all.
And now Kwame is coming up
and I'm going to sit down
and we're going to
talk junk [laughter].
>> Kwame Alexander:
Jaqueline Woodson.
[ Applause ]
Before we get into the Q and A I
just wanted to recognize a woman,
activist, poet extraordinaire who
is here today and just have her,
if she wouldn't mind,
answer that question
of how do you find a mentor.
You all -- and then the other
thing is, how cool would it be
like for you all to get
a picture of like Nikki
and Jackie on stage together.
You all give it up
for Nikki Giovanni.
[ Applause ]
Nikki, can you just share, if you
wouldn't mind, with the writers
and business people and
students who are here today,
how do you answer the question,
how do you find a mentor?
>> Nikki Giovanni: I was listening
to Jacqueline and I realized,
you know, I'm no good
at things like this.
I'm not. I'm here because the
magic word to me is Kwame.
And they said you were
going to be here.
And I've had some health problems
and Jenny is wonderful to me,
and I love her so much, and
Jenny said she would drive me
over because she knows when
we say Kwame we have to go.
I'm hoping you do Aruba
or someplace like that.
I think that, at least
for me you know,
where I am is the only
thing that matters to me.
I'm just not helpful to any of you.
The only thing that matters
to me is where I am now.
And what I know is that I am a part
of a generation that
no longer exists.
You and I were talking
about it recently.
I'm a part of the generation of
segregation, and that's over,
no matter what bullshit
you're going through,
no matter who makes you unhappy,
no matter what you don't
see, none of that, it's over.
You are a part of the generation
finished with segregation.
So you're going forward.
When we look at, because I love
books so much, I really did,
when we look at The Crossover, when
we look at Brown Girl Dreaming,
you are part of another generation.
And looking at what you have
to do, you can use the history,
there's no question, because
there's a lot of history out there,
but you don't know what we knew.
You know something else.
And I think it's so important
for the young writers to write
about what they do know so we end
up, what I know best right now,
I'm sitting here with two
writers that I totally admire,
when we look at The Crossover and
when we look at Brown Girl Dreaming,
we're looking at some -- I
couldn't have written those.
You couldn't write
Gemini, my [inaudible].
You couldn't write what I wrote
because I came up fighting a system.
And you came up now
having to create something.
Am I making sense?
>> Kwame Alexander: You are.
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Yeah.
>> Nikki Giovanni: And I
think it's so important.
You know what made me really angry,
that they actually had the nerve
to correct, as they put it, roots.
I can't think of anything
dumber than somebody -- I can't.
It made me -- it just pissed me off.
How in the world if you're going
to redo something, redo
Gone With the Wind.
[ Laughter and Applause ]
That's the truth.
And somebody says, oh you know,
we found out more information.
You didn't find out anything.
Alex wrote his story, leave
it alone, show it again.
But Alex's story is what it was.
And now all of a sudden it's
like we're going to show you, oh,
Kunta went out and the reason
that he got captured was
that he was looking for a girl.
I mean, it's just crap.
And he wanted to go over
to Timbuktu so that he --
it just made me so
angry, you have no idea.
And I'll never forget Scarlett
pulling up those carrots
at the halftime, for those
of us who've seen it,
at the halftime point and saying
I'll never be hungry again.
And we know, we know our history,
we know that the reason Scarlett
and her family were not hungry
at that point was that the slaves
that they had mistreated took
the yams that they hidden,
Sherman didn't recognize
yams, Sherman knew carrots,
everybody knows carrot tail.
You put carrots --
everybody knows carrots.
Sherman knew carrots.
He burned the carrots.
He didn't know the yams
because they looked like rocks.
And it was the rocks, it was the
yams, that they said, Ms. Scarlett,
here's something for you to eat,
which she would've
never done for them.
We are a great people and that's
what -- that has to be shown.
That just has to be shown.
And I'm no good here.
I'm just --
>> Jacqueline Woodson:
You are amazing.
>> Kwame Alexander:
Ladies and gentlemen,
this is what mentorship is.
It's sitting at the feet of people
who have come and done the things
that you only dream about,
and people who have done it
under circumstances you
could never imagine.
And Jackie and I write, we
both wrote books in verse.
And we both have been influenced
and inspired by countless poets,
including Nikki Giovanni.
So I'm just -- I'm thankful.
I don't mean to put you on the spot.
>> Nikki Giovanni: Yeah.
>> Kwame Alexander: But I
want everybody to see you
and to remind you that tonight at
the Folgers Shakespeare Library --
Theater, it's theater, right?
Theater at 7:30 Nikki
and Haki Madhubuti
and myself will be
doing a conversation
on the black arts movement.
And it is sold out though so, yeah.
Because I'm just telling you all,
if you don't have tickets I just
want you all to know about it.
But Nikki Giovanni,
everyone [applause].
Thank you.
Just a second.
The first question
for Jackie Woodson.
Over here.
Yeah, over here.
>> Hello, oh sorry.
My name is Alexis Smithers
[assumed spelling],
and I'm a queer black
writer, and I wanted to know,
I write from [inaudible].
I had to write a story
I could survive in
and I was wondering
how do you write --
how do you create in a way
that you forgive yourself
so that you can still
live in this world
and not stay stuck in
the story you write?
>> Jacqueline Woodson:
Forgive myself for what?
>> Well, there's a lot -- as
you said, there's a lot of shame
in like the family sector when you
write about that kind of stuff.
And I was wondering if you have
to forgive yourself for the things
that you promised you
would keep a secret?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: I
never made any promises.
But I did -- you know,
it's interesting
because when I was writing
Brown Girl Dreaming,
because it's my story,
right, and I have --
there are four kids in our family,
and each of us would probably tell
that story differently, because kids
have different experiences inside
the same family.
And so I -- and that's
why it's a memoir,
right, because it's my memory.
And one thing I was
respectful though,
I did show my siblings the
parts that they showed up in
and asked them if it was okay.
You know, did they feel okay with
me putting this in the world,
just because I want to keep --
they're my family, you know,
and I want to keep
them as close as I can.
So I did ask them was that okay.
And the one thing that my
brother didn't want me to talk
about his dad, because he has a
different dad, and I respected that.
So I didn't -- and I didn't feel
any shame in not telling that story
because my sense was
that's Roman's story
for him to tell when he's ready.
And it was [inaudible] who
said how can I tell my story
when you're standing on my throat?
And I think that happens
a lot that people try
to tell other people's stories,
and that's when it gets dangerous,
and I didn't want to
tell anyone else's.
I wanted to tell mine.
And that was my story.
And I didn't want to -- I didn't
feel like with Roman's story
that I was hiding anything because
it's like he's my brother, here's,
you know, now he looks
different than we do,
and it was what I understood
at that time about who he was.
But I think it, you know,
Audrey Lord said your
silence will not protect you.
We can sit in our corner as new --
as bottles and we will
still be no less afraid.
And I really believe that
it's so important to not walk
through this world fearful
of anything, because that --
because that's the
world silencing you
and it's important
not to be silenced.
>> Kwame Alexander: Over here.
>> How did your family --
oh, how did your family respond
to that book in particular?
But -- like are they
fans of your work?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: You
know they -- I think --
I think it's complicated.
My sister loves it because, of
course, she comes off sound --
you know, being [inaudible].
I don't know if my
older brother read it.
He is happy to have it on his shelf
but I don't think the
bind is cracked.
And Roman loves it.
Roman is really proud of me.
So, sadly, my mom died about
a year into the writing of it
so she never got to see it as it is.
And my relatives in South Carolina,
many of whom are still
witnesses, they like it.
They actually helped me with a lot
of it, so I think they're happy.
I think family is always
nervous when family writes a book
because it's like,
do I dare crack this?
What am I going to find inside?
>> Kwame Alexander: Jackie, I
was telling everyone earlier
that this symposium,
this master class,
came together because I was
talking to my editor and I said,
do you have any editors of color?
You know, what's going on?
Are you working on that?
And she was like, nah, I
haven't been able to find any.
There aren't any out there.
And so part of that
to me is a cop out.
And part of that is, well,
I need to make sure that --
do my part to make sure
there are editors of color
who are -- who are on the horizon.
And so I texted you and I
said, let's do a symposium,
a master class, at the
Library of Congress.
And so I just wanted you to speak
to that, like addressing that issue
when an editor says, well, there
aren't a whole lot of editors
of color out there and what that
means and what's the responsibility
of the people in the
audience and so forth?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: It's such a
good question in terms of I think
that one thing We Need Diverse
Books is doing is they're having --
they're doing internships
in publishing
and money is going toward
getting people a place to live
in New York while they're doing
their internship because that's one
of the hardest things is to be
able to afford New York City
where so much of the
publishing is happening.
I mean, we know all the
editors of color in publishing,
especially African American editors.
We know both of them.
I mean, there are a couple
[laughter] who are so,
but I remember Jason and I
talking and he was saying
that someone was asking, he didn't
have anyone locked and loaded
to say, look here's someone
and that's the hard part,
to be pushing for this
change and not knowing
where to find the people
who could do the work.
So I think that it's hard, and
I think it is so important.
I think it's great to
want to be a writer.
I think editors change the world
in that they get us into the world
and they get these great
books into the world.
So I don't know, I mean, I'm excited
for what We Need Diverse
Books is doing.
I'm excited for anyone who
is thinking about going
into the role of being an editor.
Children's books is really fun.
We all know each other and it's
a -- it's a great place to be so.
And also, the publishing program
at City College is a great place
that's trying to groom more people
of color to go into publishing.
On June 16, or is it the 19th,
Amistad is having its 30th
or its 50th, 30th anniversary party.
And Amistad is that
black imprint at Harper.
So I don't know, it's
a party that's open
to the public so people should come.
It's at Mist in Harlem and there's
going to be a lot of networking.
A lot of times when we get together
that kind of networking happens.
>> Kwame Alexander: Amistad was
founded by a man by the name
of Charles -- I want to say Harris,
but he was the publishing director
at Howard University Press.
And then he founded a black
publishing company called Amistad
and it became an imprint of Harper.
And that was 30 some years
ago when was doing --
you know, 40 some years ago
when he was doing what Jason
did with Lee and Low in '91.
And so it starts out with
this vision, this dream,
and it can really expand
if you stay with it.
And so -- and I was
published by Amistad.
You're published by Amistad
with Another Brooklyn, so yeah.
Ellen, you have a question?
Right here?
[ Inaudible ]
[ Applause ]
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Where
are you going to be interning?
[ Inaudible ]
Oh, cool.
>> Kwame Alexander: We have a
question right here in the front.
He's going to bring the mic to you.
>> Nikki Giovanni:
I have a question.
Because you said with
the [inaudible]
and of course I've spoken --
I would speak for the devil,
it doesn't matter because
what I have --
what I have to say I have to say
and it's not going to change.
I just wonder, why
you wouldn't let them
or have them have your
work as a part of it?
>> Jaqueline Woodson: Why I -- why
I wouldn't do it at that point?
Because I felt like it was
a dishonest representation
of what they -- and it
wasn't, it was for a magazine
that she was putting together.
And I felt like if you're
representing the people
in this magazine but
not representing them
at your institution, that
just felt dishonest to me.
>> Nikki Giovanni: Have
you spoken to them?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: This was
this morning, so I e-mail her.
I haven't gotten her response yet.
But it'll be a long dialogue, I can
keep e-mailing forever [laughter].
>> Kwame Alexander:
He's bringing the mic.
>> How do you feel
about hard stances?
Because I think it's, you know, so
the Jacqueline Woodson of today,
right, a person who has sort of
transcended the wall that a lot
of people in this room are
trying to get to the wall, right.
So how do you feel about these hard
stances that you're making in terms
of what are the hard
lines that you're coming
into because there are people
that are trying to come
into the industry that you -- right?
Are there things that
you need to hold firm to?
Are there things that -- the
compromises that are coming your way
that you need to navigate?
I mean, what could you -- what
light could you shine on that?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Well,
I think all of us can --
I mean, I think Kwame and
Nikki can speak to it, too,
in terms of there are -- there
are deep personal beliefs you have
that you never cross the line about.
I remember for two administrations
in a row I was invited
to the White House.
And I was like, no, I'm not
going because I don't believe
in the work these people are doing.
And my publisher kind of leaned
on me a little bit and
said this is great.
This is great publicity you need.
And I'm like, no, I can't do that.
And I've never regretted it.
And I think that the stuff
that you feel deep, you know,
at your core about
being the thing that --
you know, for me, I
was like I'm not going
to be the smiling black
person in that photo.
And so that's stuff that you feel
deeply about is important to you
and you can't sell
your soul on that.
I think that something like
this 20 years ago, what --
20 years ago it would've
been an issue
because it wouldn't have been 20
years of not being invited there.
So I think some of the earlier
journals and stuff if they asked me
to contribute I did it without even
thinking about it because I wanted
that kind of recognition.
But I definitely do --
I mean, and this is --
this is going to be
from the womb in terms
of having these deep personal
beliefs and not wanting
to over -- to compromise.
What do you think?
>> Kwame Alexander: I agree.
I mean, I think you have to decide
for yourself what are those lines,
and that comes from
how are you raised?
You know, what are
your ideas and ideals?
What kind of artistic and writerly
integrity are you going to have?
And you got to decide that.
And the thing is, if
you just yourself,
if you're just authentic you
can never sort of get caught,
or get caught up because
you're always being yourself.
Nikki likes to say, or in this -- I
quote this a lot in this interview
with Claudia Tait [assumed
spelling] of black women writers,
Nikki talked about
dancing naked on the floor.
And you do it and, if you like
it, cool, if you don't, go home,
but I'm going to do what I do.
I think you just got to
do that, whatever it is.
And it may evolve because
we don't remain the same.
We grow, but you do have to be
authentic, that's what I think.
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Right
there in the striped suit.
>> Kwame Alexander: Yes.
We'll come to you next.
Yeah.
>> This question is for
both Kwame and Jacqueline.
A number of people in the room might
know this, but I don't know this,
how did you come into writing novels
in verse and who influenced you?
>> Kwame Alexander: So, ladies and
gentlemen, that was Ruth Foreman,
who is an esteemed poet and was
the author of several books,
including We Are the
Young Magicians,
which won the Bonar Poetry prize.
Sonya Sanchez [assumed spelling]
was the -- selected that book.
She also wrote a book
called Renaissance.
And so, yeah, so Ruth
Foreman you all.
[ Applause ]
>> Jacqueline Woodson:
The first book I wrote
in verse was a book
called Locomotion.
And it was a collection of poems
told from the point of view
of an 11 year old boy
who was in foster care
and separated from his sister.
And he's in the fifth grade and
his teacher introduces poetry
and different forms and he realizes
that he can tell his
story through this form.
So -- and that -- this
is where his genius lies.
And so I didn't know that I was
going to write a book in verse,
but as I wrote and rewrote I
realized that I would be breaking
that first rule of writing, which is
show don't tell, if I had this story
of this boy writing poetry and the
whole book wasn't representing that.
And so that -- at that point
I was reading a ton of poetry
and researching different form --
you know, studying different forms.
So when I got the Brown
Girl Dreaming,
again I knew I was writing a memoir
and I was writing down memory,
and I know that memory came in
these small moments with all
of this white space around it.
So the form was decided that way.
It made sense.
And then as I went back --
as I started rewriting I realized
I wanted to begin to shape it
so that the poetry
was more intentional.
And then I added the haiku, so it's
interspersed with all these how
to listen haiku, and those were
to basically be this kind of pull
out on how one becomes a writer.
So the writing and the rewriting
helped decide what the eventual
form was.
>> Kwame Alexander: I think
for me it -- and this is --
we can sort of bring this
back full circle because we're
about to close out, and this
is a black arts movement event,
tribute, celebration.
For me, when I look back at the
poets that I read and studied
when I -- and got excited about
in college and beyond, it was --
it was Haki Madhubudi's But
He Was Cool, but him was cool,
him was refrigerator cool.
And it was sort of taking these --
and Nikki Giovanni's I Was Born in
the Congo, which is a real cool,
hip way to say once upon a time.
I mean, but it really --
you know, and so these poets
from the black arts movement were
writing these stories in one poem.
They were giving you
a beginning, a middle,
and an end in 20 and
30 and 40 lines.
And, of course, that came
from the Harlem renaissance,
Lakes and Hughes.
I woke up this morning
about half past three.
All the ladies in town
were gathered around me.
Sweet gals was a moaning.
Sylvester is going to die.
And a hundred pretty ladies
bowed their heads to cry.
I woke up a little later,
about half passed four.
The doctors and undertakers
both at my door.
Tell all my mourners to mourn in red
because there ain't no
sense in me being dead.
He's telling a story.
And so you're getting these stories.
And so when I started writing
poetry I was telling stories
in these poems.
And so it was -- it took
me maybe about 15 years,
but I feel like it was a
natural progression to get
to the point where, okay,
well, I sort of figured out how
to have fun telling
stories and poems,
how can I now group these poems
together and tell a story novel
in a full, complete novel.
And the first book that I read
that sort of showed me that that
that was possible was two books.
It was Sharon Creech's Love That Dog
and it was Hope Anita Smith's
Keeping the Night Watch
and The Way a Door Closes.
And those are really
phenomenal novellas in verse.
We have time for one more question.
>> Jacqueline Woodson:
We have one right there.
>> Kwame Alexander: Yes, right here.
Yes, thank you.
>> So I probably should have asked
this question a little earlier,
but it came to mind when
you were standing up there.
When you go to a publishing company,
where does the money come from?
Do you have to have your own money
to establish your own company?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: That's
a great, great question.
So in terms of publishing
a book, so publishers --
mainstream publishers pay you.
They give you an advance
on signing, and that --
and what an advance means
is that they'll publish --
it's a money upfront
and then a whole --
once those books sell
enough to cover
that advance then you
start getting royalties.
Usually 10% escalating to 12%.
So there's this whole
financial system to it.
Self-publishing is different.
Self-publishing you pay to
publish your book and then --
and then all the money that comes --
that you sell the books
for you earn, right.
So then you cover -- you put --
you put up your own advance
and then earn it back.
And then once you've paid yourself
off from paying for that book all
that money is money that's yours.
So there -- some people
self-publish,
some people go the mainstream
route, some people self-publish
when the mainstream
doesn't buy their book.
The thing about the mainstream
is you have a publicist,
you have an editor, you have a
person who designs your cover.
You have all of these
people in house that,
you know, the publisher pays.
Self-publishing you have to pay
for all that yourself and you have
to sell the book yourself.
You know, you have to get
it out there yourself.
So, does that makes sense?
>> Kwame Alexander: All
right, let's end with this.
Jackie, I'm going to
ask you five questions
and you just give me the
first, you know, your answer.
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Okay.
>> Kwame Alexander: When I say
John Steptoe what comes to mind?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Stevie.
>> Kwame Alexander: Stevie.
>> Jacqueline Alexander:
My name is Robert
but my mama don't call me
no Robertie [phonetic].
I love that book.
>> Kwame Alexander: John Steptoe.
>> Jacqueline Woodson:
Does everyone know Stevie?
>> Kwame Alexander: You got
to know Stevie, John Steptoe.
He got his book deal
when he was 18 or 19.
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Was he?
I didn't realize he was that young.
>> Kwame Alexander: Eighteen, 19.
>> Jacqueline Woodson: [inaudible]
Steptoe is the first book I read
that had people that looked like me
and talking like the people I knew.
>> Kwame Alexander: What
are you reading now?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Oh, right
now I am reading Gail Foreman's new
book, and I am also reading --
well, my son is reading
Jason Reynolds new book,
and he won't peel it off and let me
finish reading it, and I am also --
I can't remember what else.
It's on my iPad, that's so bad.
>> Kwame Alexander: Why is
children's literature important?
>> Jacqueline Woodson:
Children's literature is important
because children are going to
change the world, and they're open
and they're honest
and they're hungry
and we were all children once.
>> Kwame Alexander: Do
you have a favorite word?
>> Jacqueline Woodson: Do
I have a favorite word?
That's a good -- I think ding-dang
is what I say most [laughter].
That's two words, there's a hyphen.
>> Kwame Alexander: Last
bit of advice you want to --
or statement or quotation that
you want to offer to these --
just start it with a
text between you and I.
I mean, you -- we make -- we make
things happen when we want to.
And so what do you want to leave
-- what's the last bit of --
piece of information you
want to leave them with?
>> Jacqueline Woodson:
You have the power.
So just know that.
There's no excuse.
You have the power.
And you have the power
to change the world.
It's every single day.
>> Kwame Alexander: Ladies and
gentlemen, Jacqueline Woodson.
[ Applause ]
I want to thank Jason Low,
Cassandra Pelham, Jennifer Brown,
Jacqueline Woodson, Jason Reynolds
for coming out, for each of you
for being a part of this master
class today and for offering hope
and inspiration and information.
It was invaluable.
Did you all feel like it was worthy?
>> Yeah.
[ Applause ]
I want to personally thank the
Center for Poetry and Literature,
the Library of Congress, Anya
Craighton [assumed spelling].
>> Criton [assumed spelling].
>> Kwame Alexander: Criton, and
Robert Casper [assumed spelling]
for hosting this event and
for doing the wonderful work.
Let's give it up for the Center
for Poetry and Literature.
[ Applause ]
And certainly We Need Diverse Books,
thank you for doing the
behind the scenes stuff
to really pull this off.
I really appreciate you [applause].
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.