Category Writing for Children and Young Adults

The Power of Visual Literature

Spalding School of Creative and Professional Writing

By Beth Ann Bauman, Writing for Children & Young Adult Faculty

If you’re a YA writer, you already know you need to read a wide variety of literature, including YA, of course, and general fiction with teen protagonists.  But I’d argue it can be just as helpful to study good TV and movies about teens.  If you’re struggling, say, to move a character through a narrative, visual literature (TV and movies) is really good at externalizing the internal landscape of a character.  There’s also an economy of language on the screen that can be really useful to the apprentice writer who needs to learn focus.   

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THE UNINVITED

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By Lesléa Newman, Writing for Children & Young Adult Faculty member

[Originally posted in The Nerdy Book Club by CBETHM on 11/12/2019. Reprinted here with permission from The Nerdy Book Club.]

Head shot by Mary Vazquez

I have been invited to hundreds of schools as a visiting author over the last several decades. And there are hundreds (thousands!) of schools who haven’t invited me. But I have never been uninvited to a school. Until now.

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The Power & Wonder of Revision

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By Leah Henderson, Writing for Children & Young Adults, Spalding School of Writing Faculty

On any given day, I hear or read a new article, blog post, or craft chapter offering up what an author believes to be the “best writing advice.” It feels as if everyone thinks they have the answers, but of course most of the answers are different. And you know what, that’s okay, because no two writers are alike. We each have distinct ways of writing, seeing, and interpreting the world around us. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that we’d each have different approaches for creating stories.

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The Intricacies of Time in Story

Spalding School of Creative and Professional Writing

By Edie Hemingway, Writing for Children & Young Adult Faculty

As we enter not only a new year, but a new decade, I find myself thinking a lot about time. How unsettled these times are. How fast it flies by. And what does the future hold? When I looked for a simple definition of time, this was the first of many I came across: “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”  An endless progression!

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Summer Residency in Paris: The Rest of the Details!

Spalding School of Creative and Professional Writing

By Katy Yocom, Spalding School of Writing Associate Director for Communications and Alumni Relations

Last week, I wrote up all the details we could announce about our Paris residency, July 6-16, 2020. This week I’m back with final details, including travel costs and an innovative new workshop focused on professional writing.

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Summer Residency in Paris: (Most of) The Details You’ve Been Waiting For

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By Katy Yocom, Spalding School of Writing Associate Director of Communications and Alumni Relations

This is the time of year when students and alums start sending me GIFs of impatient cats, with captions like “Me watching my email for news about Paris.”

I know you’re eager to make your plans. I swear we’re not holding out on you; we’re just putting the final touches on the residency. And in that spirit, even though final details are still in progress, here’s what I can tell you.

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Ohm’s Law

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By Debra Kang Dean, Spalding School of Writing Poetry Faculty

For any circuit the electrical current is directly proportional to the voltage and is inversely proportional to the resistance.

As a consequence of my bewilderingly high scores in the electronics section of the battery of tests I had to take before enlisting in the Air Force, I was recruited into the field of ground radio repair. It turned out to be a poor match since I never really got beyond being able to read schematics; I console myself by believing that one need also have mechanical sense to do well, and my scores on that part of the test had been dismal.

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Announcing the Full Line-up of Spalding’s Festival of Contemporary Writing, Nov. 16-22

Spalding School of Creative and Professional Writing

Spalding University’s Festival of Contemporary Writing, the state’s largest fall-spring reading series, takes place Saturday, November 16, through Friday, November 22, with faculty and alumni of the low-residency programs of Spalding’s School of Creative and Professional Writing. Bestselling graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang headlines the festival as Distinguished Visiting Writer. Yang is the author of the Printz Award-winning American Born Chinese and the National Book Award Finalist Boxers & Saints, a boxed set of graphic novels. Yang has served as a National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.

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A Cornucopia of Riches for Our Spalding Writing Community: Fall 2019 Residency Overview

Spalding School of Creative and Professional Writing

By Kathleen Driskell, Chair, Spalding’s School of Creative and Professional Writing

Here’s something I’ve learned. Nearly everybody thinks they have a picture book in them. Another thing I’ve learned? To underestimate the expertise needed to write a good picture book is foolish. At Spalding’s Fall 2019 SCPW residency in Louisville, we’ll give our writers a chance to explore picture book practice during our cross-genre venture into Writing for Children and Young Adults.

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Multiple Perspectives: To Use or Not

Spalding School of Creative and Professional Writing

By Beth Ann Bauman, Writing for Children & Young Adults Faculty

Maybe it’s just me, but the use of multiple perspectives in middle-grade and YA fiction seems to have swelled in the last decade. And it’s understandable why this is an appealing choice for a writer. It’s fun to head hop, use different voices, and create a broader understanding of the world. When done well, it makes for a satisfying, compelling read, such as in the young-adult novel Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, a WWII story that follows four narrators seeking passage on a ship to escape a Soviet advance. The shifting perspectives provide a wide lens on this historical event while keeping a strong narrative focus. But handling multiple perspectives is tricky and complicated, and a book can easily lose its narrative unity.  Before attempting, here are some considerations:   

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