The Native Children’s and YA Writing Intensive will offer an opportunity for reflection, conversation, celebration, and manuscript and career development to Native/First Nations writers.
Program Overview
Location: The Writing Barn, Austin, Texas. If necessary, due to local COVID-19 restrictions, the Writing Intensive may move to a virtual format.
Date(s): Thursday, August 4, 2022, through Sunday, August 7, 2022
Registration Cost: $100. Proceeds from the program will support future Native Writing Intensives.
Registration scholarships are available. Most participants will receive scholarship support.
Lodging expenses during the intensive will be approximately $400. Lodging scholarships are also available.
The Native Children’s and YA Writing Intensive will offer an opportunity for reflection, conversation, celebration, and manuscript and career development.
We’ll be sharing insights, information, resources, and contacts related to children’s and YA writing, Native books for young readers, and the surrounding publishing world.
We’re committed to community building, nurturing new voices, supporting working literary artists, and serving kids and teens while centering the needs of Native youth.
Up to 14 participants will be invited to participate in the program, which will include discussions of manuscripts in progress.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis beginning on April 1, 2022.
Scholarship priority will be given to early acceptances. As part of your application, please be sure to indicate on the application form whether financial assistance would be critical to your participation.
If you have any questions about the application, please contact alainalavoie@diversebooks.org.
Faculty
Rosemary Brosnan
Rosemary Brosnan is Vice President and Publisher at HarperCollins Children’s Books, where she has worked for twenty-two years, and recently launched two imprints: Heartdrum and Quill Tree Books. Throughout her career, she has been committed to publishing diverse voices. She has published picture books, nonfiction, chapter books, graphic novels, and fiction for all ages. On the Heartdrum list, Rosemary has published books by Indigenous authors Christine Day, Jen Ferguson, Dawn Quigley, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and Brian Young. Other authors and illustrators Brosnan has worked with include Elizabeth Acevedo, Kwame Alexander, Jodi Lynn Anderson, the Blackout team (Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon), Ernesto Cisneros, Jerry Craft, Saadia Faruqi, Neil Gaiman, Sheba Karim, Gail Carson Levine, the late Walter Dean Myers, Patrick Ness, Neal Shusterman, Melissa Sweet, and Rita Williams-Garcia.
Adriana Dominguez
Adriana Domínguez, Aevitas Creative Management, represents award-winning illustrators including John Parra, a New York Times Best Illustrator and recipient of three Pura Belpré Honors, Kirkus Prize finalist Jaqueline Alcántara, and Orbis Pictus Honor recipient Juliet Menéndez. Her author list includes NAACP Image Award winner Katheryn Russell Brown, Pura Belpré Honor recipient Angela Cervantes and Emmy Award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa. Adriana has wide-ranging experience in publishing; she began her editorial career at Scholastic in the 1990s, served as Children’s Reviews Editor at Críticas Magazine (Library Journal), and as Executive Editor at HarperCollins, where she led the children’s division of the Latinx-focused Rayo imprint. She has a long trajectory of supporting authors and illustrators from underrepresented backgrounds and always welcomes submissions that offer a diverse point of
view. Adriana is interested in illustrators with fresh, unmistakable styles, platform-driven narrative nonfiction from children to adult, and select children’s fiction from picture books to middle grade. She is based in New York.
Tara Gonzalez
Tara Gonzalez is an Associate Agent at Erin Murphy Literary Agency, as well as the assistant to Erin Murphy and social media coordinator for EMLA. She's located in Florida, although she's currently plotting how to make her way back to London, where she studied abroad for several months during her undergrad. Tara is actively building her client list. She loves all ages of children's literature, but her passion is in young adult and middle grade novels. Her taste spans across broad ranges of genres, from contemporary, historical, literary, to adventure and fantasy. She loves characters and stories that resonate, and strong voices. Beyond books, Tara loves movies, cats, buying things she probably doesn't need on Etsy, and getting hooked on TV shows that get cancelled after one season. She recently graduated with her master's degree in Media and Communication Studies, and is always looking for the next opportunity to travel.
Monique Gray Smith
Monique Gray Smith is a proud mom of teenage twins and an award-winning, best-selling author. Her first published novel, Tilly: A Story of Hope and Resilience won the 2014 Canadian Burt Award for First Nation, Métis and Inuit Literature. Since then, Monique has had 7 books come out that cover a broad spectrum of ages, topics and emotions. Woven into all of Monique’s writing, speaking engagements and online courses is the teaching that Love is Medicine. Monique’s novel, Tilly and the Crazy Eights was longlisted for Canada Reads 2021. She is currently writing the Young Adult Adaptation of Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, with a November 2022 release date. Also coming out in Fall 2022 is a picture book, I Hope with Orca Book Publishers. Monique is Cree, Lakota and Scottish and has been sober and involved in her healing journey for over 30 years. She is well known for her storytelling, spirit of generosity and focus on resilience.
Cynthia Leitich Smith
Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee citizen) is a NSK Neustadt Laureate and NYT bestselling author. Her novel Hearts Unbroken won an American Indian Youth Literature Award, and her latest books are ANCESTOR APPROVED, an ALA Notable that received four starred reviews and Sisters of the Neversea, which received six starred reviews. Her upcoming novel HARVEST HOUSE will be released in spring 2023. Cynthia is both the author-curator of Heartdrum, an imprint of HarperChildren’s, and the Katherine Paterson Chair at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program.
Elizabeth Albert-Peacock and Thomas Peacock
Elizabeth Albert-Peacock is an enrolled member of Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, retired educator from University of Minnesota Duluth, Co-owner of Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing, residing in Duluth, MN, and Bayfield WI.
Thomas Peacock is the author of a dozen books on Ojibwe history and culture, Native education, racism, and fiction. His latest works include Walking Softly, The Fire, The Tao of Nookomis, The Dancers, The Forever Sky, Beginnings and The Wolf’s Trail. His books have garnered awards, including two Minnesota Book Awards, Multicultural Children’s Book Award (National Association on Multicultural Education), and Indie adult fiction writer of the year (2020 Minnesota Library Foundation for The Wolf’s Trail). He completed his doctorate in education from Harvard University. Together with his wife, Betsy, they co-publish Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing, specializing in Native books by Native authors and illustrators. A member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, he lives in Duluth, Minnesota and Bayfield, Wisconsin.
Leslie Widener
Leslie Widener is an author and illustrator of books and stories for children. She has illustrated six Choctaw-related picture books, including Chukfi Rabbit’s Big, Bad Bellyache; The Turkey Who Liked to Show Off; Why the Turtle Has Cracks on His Back, and others. A member of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Lesie lives in McKinney, Texas with her husband and artist Terry Widener.
