An Interview with Author/Illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Registration for the Marvelous Midwest Conference is full, but luckily another member of the faculty has agreed to be interviewed for our blog. Today we welcome author/illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi. 

Debbie Ridpath Ohi received many rejections before getting her first big break (and a book contract!) at the 2010 SCBWI-LA conference, where her art was discovered in the portfolio showcase by Simon & Schuster publisher and editor, Justin Chanda. Debbie is the author and illustrator of Sam & Eva and Where Are My Books? (Simon & Schuster). Her illustrations and/or writing have appeared in two dozen books including titles by Michael Ian Black, Aaron Reynolds and Judy Blume. Upcoming book: I’m Worried, a new picture book written by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by Debbie (published by Simon & Schuster). Other upcoming projects include illustrations for a picture book by Linda Sue Park and a yet-uncontracted middle grade novel. You can find out more about Debbie and her work at DebbieOhi.com  as well as on Twitter at @inkyelbows and Instagram at @inkygirl. Debbie is represented by Ginger Knowlton at Curtis Brown Ltd.

Your intensive is a Social Media Master Class for Authors and Illustrators. You plan to discuss how to promote yourself even if you are an introvert. Can we be true to ourselves and have a social media presence?

I find this question intriguing because in my opinion, the best type of social media presence happens when you ARE being true to yourself. If you aren’t, people will be able to tell. Or if they can’t tell, then eventually YOU will get tired of pretending to be someone you’re not.

I am an introvert, though some people don’t believe this. After crowded social situations like a cocktail party or a conference, no matter how fun, I need to re-energize with silence and solitude.

When I first realized that I needed to leave my safe hobbit-hole of an office and start meeting others in the industry, I was terrified. Terrified that no one would want to talk with me, terrified that I’d say the wrong thing, terrified of having to talk about myself instead of just staying in the background.

What I found: social media can be a great networking tool, especially for those who are more comfortable behind a screen than chitchatting with strangers in person. It’s good to get practice with the latter, of course! And eventually, I did find that this gradually got easier for me (and it can even be fun).

For me, social media was the perfect way to ease into the world of networking. Before I ever chose to post anything, I could read other people’s posts, see how they did it. I could think about my responses before replying. I could doublecheck spelling and facts before saying anything publicly.

Social media is also a great way to get to know and ”meet” others in the community before interacting them in person at a conference, making the latter much less awkward. I’ll talk more about this and offer some practical tips in my Social Media Masterclass for Authors and Illustrators workshop at the MMW conference.

Identifying one’s brand seems crucial. This seems like a dumb question, but sometimes I struggle with what a brand actually is—especially if one is just at the beginning of one’s career. Do you have thoughts on that?

This is NOT a dumb question!

A lot of people have a problem with the word “brand” because they associate it with commercial products like soup and toothpaste. When I was first asked to speak about personal brand, I had the same reaction. “I’m an individual, not a brand!”

Whatever term you use, the fact is that we all make choices when it comes to how we look and interact with people. You choose what clothes to wear for different occasions, how you interact with people in person, your reactions to what people say. These choices can vary, depending on the situation.

Similarly, you make choices when it comes to your public presence online: what aspects of your personality, life and work you choose to show and how you show them. Even if you decide to post EVERYTHING, good and bad, that is a deliberate choice.

So much about personal brand is about choices, consistency and public expectations. If people see you as “that illustrator who posts a lot of fascinating b&w drawings of cats as well as photos of her own cats”, then you’ll likely attract people who love cats as well as others. Editors and art directors looking for an artist to illustrate a middle grade novel that features cats will be more likely to think of you. Maybe you’ll be “that YA author with an office supply obsession, who posts hilarious and pithy comments about life” or “that picture book writer who is always so positive/enthusiastic and uses a lot of fun emoticons in her tweets” (for this last bit, who else immediately thought of the wonderful Ame Dyckman on Twitter?).

On the other hand, if you’re constantly just retweeting other people and never posting your own original content, then people won’t really see who YOU are. Or if you’re constantly complaining or being mean-spirited, then that will also influence how people see you in general….even if you aren’t really like that in real life.

You can always decide to change aspects of your personal brand, of course! But be aware of the potential complications. People tend to see me as an artist who posts mainly happy, cheerful and uplifting art, for example. As a result, I mainly get offered book illustration projects that need happy, cheerful and uplifting art. I do have other illustration styles, however, including a darker and creepycute style which I would love to use in a book someday, so have been gradually sharing some of those samples.

I’ll be talking more about this topic in my workshop.

Your breakthrough came at an SCBWI conference. Can you share what that experience was like?

It was amazing. Even though it all happened back in 2010, I confess there’s a tiny part of me that still keeps waiting to wake up and find out it was all a dream.

Thanks for calling it a breakthrough. It drives me a little crazy when people call me a Cinderella story, putting the emphasis on luck rather than any efforts on my part. YES, there is always an element of luck when it comes to having your work discovered and then championed by others in the industry. But I also am a firm believer in working hard to help create your own luck.

I had been trying to get noticed in the children’s book industry for many years. I wrote three middle grade novel mss, two submitted through my agent. I could tell I was getting better as well as gradually gaining some traction — the rejection letters were more personal and encouraging — BUT I could tell that I needed to venture out of my introverted office-cocoon and start meeting people. My friend Lee Wardlaw had encouraged me to go to SCBWI conferences, and I decided it was about time to listen to her advice.

I submitted my middle grade manuscript to the mss critique program but hadn’t read the rules closely — it ended up being rejected because I had included b&w illustrations in my middle grade manuscript sample. My friend Beckett Gladney, my sister and my husband convinced me to enter the portfolio showcase. Beckett, who was rooming with me, helped me put together my very first portfolio as well as making me a gorgeous handmade cover.

I ended up winning an Illustration Mentorship Award as well as an Honor Award! Not only did I receive valuable advice from each of my Mentors, but I also made new friends by keeping in touch with the other Mentees as well as Mentees from other years; you can find out more about us as well as what we’ve been learning over the years at KidLitArtists.com.

But wait….that’s not all! Justin Chanda was one of the judges for the overall Portfolio Showcase Awards, and he asked me if I’d like to illustrate a picture book by Michael Ian Black for Simon & Schuster Children’s. I said YES (of course), and that became my very first children’s book project: I’M BORED. Since then, I’ve illustrated many other picture books, helped revamp some Judy Blume classics, and also written and illustrated my own books.

At that time, you could not enter both the mss critique program as well as the portfolio showcase….which means that if I had not been rejected from the former, I would never have entered the latter. My takeaway: you never know when a rejection or failure will bring new opportunities, but you need to be flexible and open to those opportunities.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights. We look forward to hearing more from you in May!

If you have already registered for the Marvelous Midwest Conference, you can still add an intensive to your registration by contacting Darcy Zoells at notmrdarcy at gmail dot com.

 

An Interview with Agent Clelia Gore

Clelia Gore is one of the amazing faculty members who will be sharing their insights at the Marvelous Midwest Conference in May. She kindly agreed to answer a few questions for the SCBWI-WI blog. 

Clelia Gore leads the children’s and young adult division of the Seattle-based agency, Martin Literary & Media Management. A former attorney originally from the suburbs of New York City, she represents picture books, middle grade, and young adult fiction and nonfiction. One of her most recent client successes is the New York Times-bestselling picture book, RESCUE & JESSICA by Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes. You can find Clelia on Twitter at @MadmoiselleClel  and read more about her and the agency at www.martinlit.com.

In your intensive “Navigating the Nonfiction Market,” one of the insights you plan to discuss is “concept hunting.”  Can you give us a preview of what that means and why it’s important?

I think that some subjects for kid lit nonfiction are better than others. Several things inform what makes a good book topic — current holes in the marketplace, concepts that feel topical or are in particular need of being addressed, trending concepts, concepts that have a broad appeal, concepts that make sense for that particular author to write (do they have expertise in that area, a personal connection), is it distinct from what has come before, etc. 

You do rep fiction, but your bio mentions that you want to develop your nonfiction clientele. What is commercial nonfiction and why is it important?

Commercial nonfiction is for the trade market–books that are sold at bookstores, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, that you can find in libraries, etc. These books have a strong hook that helps sellers attract buyers and are meant for a broad audience. Trade publisher include Random House, Simon & Schuster, Candlewick, etc. I use the term “commercial nonfiction” here to distinguish from nonfiction for the school/library market. Books for the educational market have a different goal and different approach–they are often more straight informational and are serving educational needs. They are often not found in stores–mostly only at schools and libraries. They tend to rely less on a strong hook, i.e. are less commercial. Educational publishers (who often have commercial arms) include Capstone, Lerner, Nat Geo, Abdo. At this time, I’m focused only on commercial nonfiction for the kid lit market.

You said you were too “whimsical” to be a lawyer. We are very glad you ended up working in kid lit. Does your legal background help you now?

Thanks! I’m glad too. My legal background helps me tremendously. We deal with a lot of contracts at the agency–I feel like I have a leg up in contract negotiations and can also pick up on complex or nuanced contract issues easily and quickly because of my background. My legal knowledge helps out a lot generally when advising clients on a variety of matters, administering the agency business generally, and when any legal issues arise during the course of business. It’s something I value very much and think helps make me a great agent and businesswoman.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights. We look forward to hearing more from you in May!

If you have already registered for the Marvelous Midwest Conference May 3 – 5, you can still add an intensive to your registration by contacting Darcy Zoells at notmrdarcy at gmail dot com.

 

 

An Interview with Author Sarvinder Naberhaus

Registration for the Marvelous Midwest Conference is full! Luckily some of the faculty are sharing their insights with the SCBWI-WI blog. Today we welcome award-winning author Sarvinder Naberhaus.

Sarvinder Naberhaus is an award winning, critically acclaimed and bestselling
author. Her book LINES garnered a star review, with BLUE SKY WHITE STARS earning four more. BLUE SKY WHITE STARS is a blue ribbon book for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and is currently being printed in a Spanish bilingual paperback edition. It won the Crystal Kite, SCIBA and CA award, and was Time Magazine’s Top 10 Children’s Books of the Year. It was also World Magazine’s runner-up picture book of the year and an ALA and NCTE Poetry notable. It was recognized by Kirkus, NPR, CCBC, Indie, Bankstreet, SLJ, PW, Booklist and HuffPost’s as a best, choice, or notable book of the year, and has been nominated for several state awards, and much more. Sarvinder has a Masters of Education degree and enjoys teaching at Iowa State University. She loves being an author, and lives with her husband, dog, cats, and chickens in Iowa. Her children, however, have flown the coop. You can find her at www.sarvinder.com and follow her on Twitter @SarvinderN.

Your intensive is “Weave the Web – website creation simple step by step.” I know many of us feel overwhelmed by this. Can it really be that simple?

Usually, apps on the web can be intimidating. There are no real instructions on how to use them, so I find the easiest way get to know them is to learn from another person. That way, it is more efficient, more fun, and less intimidating. You can also get questions answered faster, which makes things less frustrating. I think applications such as Wix give you very simple basics, but offer ways to mix and match to build something as simple, as complex or as creative as you want. It is just a matter of time and practice, which we will have both of at the Marvelous Midwest Intensive. I liken it to Maurice Sendak’s Max, and how we go with him to Where the Wild Things are, where we confront the monsters and entanglements of the wild web.

Your own website is so fun and has so much to explore. What was most important to you to include?

I had a LOT of fun making my website(s). I think it is really important to have a way for the public to be able to contact you, so in that sense, I find it invaluable. I also enjoyed being able to animate some of the characters from my book LINES. Of course I have permission to use Melinda Beck’s wonderful illustrations. I use my website as a way for me to keep track of my publishing journey (which could have been done through a blog as well). Years start to run together, so I find it nice to be able to go back and see what I have published. I should probably “hide” those web pages, since they are mostly just for me. But I do love the animation because I think kids will like it when they open my website. I guess I made it mostly for kids.

Your picture book BLUE SKY WHITE STARS also weaves together images and ideas. One review said it “expresses the depth of feeling for her country in minimalist yet powerful phrases that also describe elements of the American flag.” Did you approach your website like a picture book?

During my workshop on Sunday, “Spare Me,” we’ll discover how to use minimalistic writing in a powerful way. I’ll talk about the bones of a picture book, and how to add text to compliment illustrations, and then we’ll apply and practice it, because in today’s market, editors are looking for bare word count. As for my website, I should probably approach my website like I do my picture books. I think I am so minimal with my word count, that I cut myself loose when it comes to my website. I don’t hold back! There are no editors telling me to cut, or add–and no critique group to tell me to tighten up. My website is where I can fly free. Yippee! So no, I don’t hold back. I let my creativity soar. But I will be going through the process I used when writing BLUE SKY WHITE STARS at my presentation on Sunday, because most times, less is more. I think both sessions will be a productive and informative time!

Thank you so much for sharing your insights. We look forward to hearing more from you in May!

If you have already registered, you can still add an intensive to your registration by contacting Darcy Zoells at notmrdarcy at gmail dot com.

 

An Interview with Julie Berry

The Marvelous Midwest Conference will be held on May 3 – 5. Over the next few weeks, the SCBWI-WI blog will be hosting interviews with many of the faculty. Today we continue our faculty interviews with award-winning author Julie Berry.

Julie Berry is the author of the 2017 Printz Honor and Los Angeles Times Book Prize shortlisted novel The Passion of Dolssa, the Carnegie and Edgar shortlisted All the Truth That’s in Me (2013, Viking), the Odyssey Honor title The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place (2014, Roaring Brook), and many others. Her latest middle grade novel, The Emperor’s Ostrich, released in 2017 from Roaring Brook. Her forthcoming young adult novel, Lovely War, releases from Viking Children’s Books in March 2019, and her first picture books will release in fall 2019. She holds a BS from Rensselaer in communication and an MFA in creative writing for children and young adults from Vermont College. She lives in Southern California with her family.

Q: One of the breakout sessions you’ll be leading is called “And the Last Shall Be First: Secondary Characters in YA and Middle-Grade Fiction.” Can you tell us about two secondary characters you love—one from your books and one from someone else’s? What do you love about them? What makes them successful as secondary characters?

A: My first thought, when trying to choose a secondary from my recent novel, Lovely War, is “None of them are secondary! They’re all equally important.” And that’s my thesis in a nutshell.

One of my favorite secondary characters in Lovely War is Émil Segal. He’s a poilu, or French soldier of World War I. (“Poilu” means “hairy one;” they were famous for not shaving.) Émil becomes the French combat trainer of Aubrey Edwards, a major character and member of the fabled “Harlem Hellfighters” (the US 369^th Infantry Regiment). This all-black regiment, essentially abandoned by the U.S. Army, was handed over to the French army, which welcomed them with open arms (unlike many in the segregated American army). Émil, in particular, has a flair for the good-natured insult, and he’s wild about Aubrey’s ragtime piano-playing. He digs up pianos even in bombed-out homes and taverns for Aubrey to play. Émil steals the show every time he appears. I adore him.The secondary character from another author’s work who comes immediately to mind is Rosa Hubermann from Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. I’m sensing a curious connection – Rosa’s got a flair for colorful insults, too. She becomes Liesel’s foster mother. When we first meet Rosa, there’s every reason to believe she will fill the Wicked Witch or Evil Stepmother archetype in the story. She seems to be a hard, unfeeling woman, a mother-but-not-mother with a harsh tongue and iron rules. Before long, however, we realize that for all her snapping and growling (and her delicious insults), Rosa is fiercely loyal, surprisingly brave, and secretly affectionate. Her bluster is a response to a life of hardship and frustration, and her fears, in particular, living in Nazi Germany and trying to keep her loved ones safe. It’s easy to love her husband, Hans, and I do, with all my heart, but Rosa’s the one who really made me cry.

Q: Another of your breakout sessions, “Write What You Don’t Know,” involves writing prompts and exercises. Was there a specific prompt or exercise that helped you solve a problem in one of your novels?

A: Years ago I developed a graphic organizer to use with children in school visit workshops to help them brainstorm ideas, select a few to form a story premise, choose a character, and develop that character. Every time I do the workshop with kids, I develop a story idea on the board as a demonstration. It’s spontaneous and different each time – I don’t cheat.

Early on, in a classroom workshop, I developed the idea that became The Emperor’s Ostrich. I was so tickled by the idea that I sat down that very day to write a beginning to it. Since then I’ve realized that, regardless of where an idea comes from, it’s a good idea to use the worksheet any time I’m developing an idea and a set of characters. Occasionally kids in workshops will ask me, “Do you really do this?” They suspect, I think, that the exercise I’m guiding them through is a gimmick, some sort of party trick. I love assuring them that, yes, I do; this process is real, and the questions I ask them to answer about their characters are the same ones I try to answer with mine.Q: The writing intensive you’ll be leading is called “Chapters and Scenes that Propel the Reader.” What do you think makes the first chapter of Lovely War successful? How did you shape the chapter over multiple revisions? 

A: There’s no one formula for how to lure readers in with a strong beginning. I’ve seen it done with an authentic voice, with smart dialogue, with urgent action or danger, with relationship tension, with an evocative setting, with an emotional appeal, with an engaging narrator, or with a distinctive verbal style. (Word to the wise: optimize as many of these as you can in your beginnings!) What all strong beginnings share is their ability to create a need to know in the reader. (Like the C.I.A., but nobody gets hurt.) Readers need to know more, they need to know why, and who, and what happens next.

I wrote many beginnings to Lovely War before hitting upon the one that stuck. The file of discarded beginnings for this book is 60 pages long, alas. That’s typical for me. I toss beginnings until I find one with energy—until, I, as reader of my own book, need to know more. Lovely War employs a somewhat unusual device of casting Greek gods as the storytellers, and in the first scene, we witness Ares and Aphrodite enter a posh hotel, take a room, and proceed upstairs for a secret tryst, only to be caught, mid-kiss, by Aphrodite’s jealous husband, Hephaestus.

From the moment I tried using gods, everything took off—an atmospheric setting, with romantic music playing, and couples whispering together at the hotel restaurant, and then a stunner of a couple entering, clearly up to no good. Sexual tension, recklessness, jealousy, capture and humiliation—they definitely had me giggling, and curious to find out more. Interestingly, once I hit upon that approach, the first chapter wrote itself pretty well. Aside from a bit of trimming, not much changed between the first chapter draft and the present version. So it wasn’t so much a revision game as a re-envisioning game. (Remember: 60 pages. Oof.)

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, Julie. We look forward to hearing more from you in May!

Even if you have already registered, you can still add an intensive to your registration by contacting Dary Zoells at notmrdarcy at gmail dot com.

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Maria Parrott-Ryan has an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has published several nonfiction articles in Cricket Media’s MUSE magazine. She was the recipient of SCBWI-WI’s 2018 middle-grade mentorship.

Interview with Author Sharon Darrow

The Marvelous Midwest Conference will be held on May 3 – 5. Over the next few weeks, the SCBWI-WI blog will be hosting interviews with many of the faculty. Today we welcome Sharon Darrow.  

Sharon was on the faculty of the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, Vermont College of Fine Arts, from 1997 to 2018, serving as Chair from 2006-09. She taught at Columbia College Chicago in the English Department from 1996 to 2003. She has been a founding member of two SCBWI chapters, North Texas and Illinois, and served as the Illinois Regional Advisor for several years. She is the award-winning author of Picture Books (Old Thunder and Miss Raney, Dorling Kindersley; Yafi’s Family, co-author Linda Pettit, Amharic Kids; Through the Tempests Dark and Wild: A Story of Mary Shelley, Creator of Frankenstein, and Young Adult novels, The Painters of Lexieville, and TRASH, all from Candlewick). Her poetry for young people has been included in Home to Me: Poems Across America edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, and her poems, short stories, interviews, and personal essays for adults have appeared in literary journals Rhino, Folio, Whetstone, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Columbia Poetry Review, Great River Review, Other Voices, The Writer’s Chronicle, and in the anthology, In the Middle of the Middle West, Indiana University. Her most recent books are Worlds within Words: Writing and the Writing Life, and new paperback and ebook editions of The Painters of Lexieville, Pudding Hill Press. The Darrow Lecture Series, named in her honor, is held annually in Montpelier, Vermont, with lectures delivered by distinguished authors who are graduates of the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program. For more information about Sharon, please visit her website.

Your intensive “What Do You Think You Are Doing?” will discuss goals and motivations, and also “how our stories’ themes reflect our deepest selves.” I love this concept. Can you tell us more about it?

The act of examining ones own life, hopes and dreams, motivations, and goals leads to greater self-knowledge, greater honesty with oneself and others, and deeper wisdom as a creative actor in the world. Stopping to check in with ourselves about who we are, what we are about, and why we do what we do is vital to making sure we are having the effect we want rather than leaving in our wake unintended or accidental thematic threads. Of course, we don’t start with the ‘moral of the tale’, but we have to acknowledge that themes will come through our writing and it behooves us to take a look at what they are from time to time.

You are also delivering the closing keynote “Writing and the Writing Life – becoming the people we need to be to write what we need to write.”  How does having a greater sense of self help creative people?

We really do discover what we think and feel through our writing. We become students of human emotion and individual response as we work hard to remember—and sometimes re-experience—emotions we have felt ourselves in the living of our lives, and then try to replicate them in a character we are growing to know better with each revision. As we grow more adept at this, our characters may begin to take on a life of their own, and begin to, in effect, write themselves. Thus, those stories that may at first seem out of our reach or beyond our skills, become possible. Revision isn’t just on the page; it’s also within the writer.

You spent so many years on the faculty at Vermont College of the Fine Arts. You must have inspired so many writers. Is there an overarching issue that you have noticed? Or is every journey different?

Every journey is different and that is an inspiring, though sometimes daunting realization for us as writers. I do believe that intensive study speeds up the journey, if not providing shortcuts, as student writers develop and prepare themselves and their manuscripts for entry into the publishing world.

Over the years, something I’ve noticed is the need for deeper emotional resonance in the writing that my students have submitted to me, and for me that meant teaching about point of view and asking my students to revise for deeper characterization. Often that meant a two- or three-step process of first telling what the character “feels” and then going further into imagining what that emotional response is in the body, its physiological manifestation. But more revision is required to go beyond simply relying upon thumping hearts and gasping breaths and such. Deep imagining can lead us to metaphorical expressions of what our minds and bodies experience in intense emotion and help us discover what characters would notice in the details of their world while experiencing those emotions.

I’ve also noticed the need for stronger, more active verb forms and less dependence upon “ly” adverbs to show action, which is another aspect of POV, one that allows for showing from the character’s perceptions instead of telling from a more dispassionate and observing narrator’s view.

Now, why do I notice these issues more than others? After many years and much frustration with my own writing process, I’ve realized that the issues I notice in others’ work are often the very issues with which I struggle the most in mine. My early drafts may be filled with weak verbs and telling, vague emotions, but I have discovered in my own work and through observing my students’ work that revision is the key, the pathway to finding the real stories we are trying to write. That is an encouraging and reassuring lesson to learn and the reason that I can say I’ve learned as much from my students as they may have from me.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, Sharon, and for all your work as an author and teacher. We look forward to hearing more from you in May!

Even if you have already registered, you can still add an intensive to your registration by contacting Dary Zoells at notmrdarcy at gmail dot com.