Poetry Friday: Fire Escape Contest Closes June 1st!

Since 2003, the Fire Escape has published poetry and short stories written by teens between cultures. I'm receiving entries for this year's contests until June 1st, and prizes will be announced June 30th. Feel free to pass on the details and rules, enjoy the short story winners here, and browse through the best poems from the past:

2006 Poetry Winners

First Prize:

Mel? by Amelia, Russia/Illinois, Age 15

Second Prize:

"Soy De" Means "I'm From" by Pedro, El Salvador/Kansas, Age 15

Third Prize:

Revolution by Amy, China/New Jersey, Age 16

2005 Poetry Winners

First Prize:

Two Worlds, Two Dreams by Andrea, Colombia/Florida, Age 17

Second Prize:

Dynasty or Wang Jo by Katherine, Korea/Georgia, Age 17

Third Prize:

Lumpia and Cornbread by Billimarie, Philippines/California, Age 17

2004 Poetry Winners

First Prize:

The Little Line by Cathy, China/Texas, Age 15

Second Prize:

Choosing Names by Grace, Singapore/California, Age 15

Third Prize:

Standing Strong by Beatrice, Philippines/California, Age 13

2003 Poetry Winners

First Prize:

Two Worlds by Natasha G., India/Alabama, Age 14

Second Prize:

The Perfect One by Zhan Tao Y., China/Nevada, Age 14

Third Prize:

From Russia With Love by Laura S., Russia/New York, Age 13

Consider The Bechtel Prize

My blogging visitors might be interested in submitting an extended version of a great post for consideration in this year's Bechtel Prize (deadline 6/29/07):

The Bechtel Prize is awarded annually in recognition of an exemplary article or essay related to:

• Creative writing education,
• Literary studies, and/or
• The profession of writing.

The winning essay appears in Teachers & Writers magazine, and the author receives a $3,500 honorarium. Possible topics include contemporary issues in classroom teaching, innovative approaches to teaching literary forms and genres, and the intersection between literature and imaginative writing.

Revision: Tips From Blume And Beyond

I love the possibilities in a literal take of the word "revision" -- to see your writing again, hopefully this time with fresh eyes. If you, like me, write ______ first drafts (pick up Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird to fill in the blank), why not peruse this fantastic (free!) on-line issue of Weekly Reader's Writing Magazine featuring tips and techniques on revision from the likes of Judy Blume and Lee Bennett Hopkins? (Source: Sandhya Nankani, editor, Writing Magazine)

Download a PDF of the complete electronic issue of "Lending a Hand with Revision." (PDF–3.03 MB) Revision is an essential stage of the writing process. It's not always easy, but all writers—even famous ones—do it. And so must you! In this handy guide from the editors of Writing you'll find exclusive advice from well-known authors and poets, examples of famous manuscripts, and simple prescriptions for better writing. Print it out. Read it. Study it. Put it in a three-ring binder. Save it. But, most of all, use it! We're pretty sure that it will help you grow into a stronger, more effective writer! Download individual sections of the magazine. Feature Story The Revision Files (PDF) Manuscript Study | Revision Lessons from: Judy Blume (PDF) Lee Bennett Hopkins (PDF) Student Writer Christian Garcia (PDF) Grammar Slammer Omit Needless Words (PDF) How-To With a Little Help from my Friends: The Gifts of a Writing Buddy (PDF) How-To Writing's Top 10 Tips for Revision (PDF) Your Turn You Be the Editor (PDF) Revision Checklist (PDF)

Creating a Sense of Place

Feel free to download a .pdf file of my article, "A Whole New World: Three Ways To Create Magical Places on Paper," which originally appeared in the October 2006 issue of Weekly Reader's Writing, a classroom periodical published six times a year for middle and high school audiences. The magazine features author interviews, how-to articles, timely features, teacher's guides, and a blog. (For subscription information, click here.)

The article includes a writing exercise I use in my workshop (Weaving The Magic Carpet of Place) for teen or adult writers. If you're looking to procrastinate and be inspired by a new generation of writers at the same time, check out the samples of in-class writing produced by eighth-graders at Devotion Middle School as well as a few of their responses to my visit.

The Skinny on Children's Book Publishing

As a true bibliophile, you never judge a book by the cover. You pick it up and scan the detailed information on the book's jacket flap, right? The good news is that now we can do that for the entire children's book industry at a new(ish) site called JacketFlap.com:

... What separates this resource from others is that in addition to contact information, the site continuously compiles valuable statistics about the publishers. As a result, JacketFlap.com contains up-to-date information on practically every children's book publisher in the business. At last count, there are more than 10,000 publishers in the JacketFlap.com database. Over 5,000 of these actively published books in 2005. There are publishers large and small in our database, and you can see where a publisher ranks on their publisher detail page. In addition to children's publisher statistics, the site contains contact information and submission guidelines for many of the publishers in the system. Best of all, the contact information is kept current by the book publishers and the site's users, whom we compensate with Amazon gift certificates for keeping the site up-to-date.

(For writers, the site) has been designed from the ground-up to make the process of submitting manuscripts better. On the Publisher Detail Page, writers are able to see at-a-glance the subject categories, the number of annual titles, and the number of new authors that the publisher has published over the past 5 years ... If you want more information about a book, you are only a single click away from being able to review everything about a book on Amazon.com. The publisher search on the home page helps you find publishers that match your target profile and provides the background research, contact information and guidelines you need to look professional when you send in your book ... Be sure to register with the site (it's FREE) ...

So if you want to know what's selling like hotcakes from Dutton or find out when Karen Day's wonderful new novel Tall Tales is coming out, head right on over to JacketFlap.com. Another fantastic service provided by Tracy Grand, the site's editor and CEO, is her brilliant megablog. If you, like me, check out bunches of kid lit blogs on a regular basis, Grand's megablog gathers all the new posts from a personalized list of favorites and displays them in one easy-to-read place. Hooray! (In fact, if you're already a JacketFlapper and want to add the Fire Escape to your list of favorites, use the link in the sidebar.)

Who Gets To Write For Whom?

Interesting discussion on the YALSA-BK listserv this past week about the right to tell stories featuring American Indian characters. Here was my contribution:

It gets complicated when the person telling the story is a descendant of the oppressor. Can a powerful person articulate the experience of the powerless? I suppose she must if the powerless cannot speak for herself. Bottom line: an insider who has suffered earns the right to tell the story in a way that's unattainable for even the most compassionate, intuitive, talented outsider.

But even two insiders would describe the same events differently. And how do you define an "insider," anyway? I am a Bengali and my parents were Hindus born in Bangladesh, but that doesn't make me an insider when I tell the story of another Bengali girl, Naima, the Muslim daughter of a rickshaw puller. My three years in Bangladesh and familiarity with the language and culture might make my story more "authentic" than yours, but Rickshaw Girl is still fiction, not memoir, and I am not the daughter of impoverished Muslims.

Best case scenario: let the stories be written from inside, outside, and in-between. That way the young person reading them can be in charge, as story is always a dialectic between hearer and teller.

For those interested in pursuing the question of who has the right to tell a story, I refer you to two of my favorite, now-classic articles: Against Borders, by Hazel Rochman, published in the March/April 1995 Horn Book Magazine, and Insiders, Outsiders, and the Question of Authenticity: Who Shall Write For African American Children? by Nina Mikkelson, published in the African American Review, Spring 1998.

I received this stimulating challenge from another member of the group:

I found this phraseology so interesting that I am e-mailing you offlist to find out: Is one considered a "descendant of the oppressor" if one's ancestors, while European, did not come to the U.S. until the 20th century? ... Are all white people descendants of the oppressor, or only those who can trace their ancestry to the Mayflower or the Revolutionary War or pre-Civil War, etc.? ... Is one presumed to have had ancestors who were "oppressors" based solely upon the fact that that person is white or should one's actual ancestors actually have oppressed someone? And, if the latter, how would one know without a full family tree?

Here was my answer:

Your question was thought-provoking, and I appreciate it, because it made me realize that even though I'm not white, I am still enjoying the benefits of those who came first and stole the land from the people who lived here. That stains my hands, too. I suppose, then, that all non-natives are seen as beneficiaries of the genocide and outsiders, whether descendants of the Puritans or descendants of later immigrants, which means I must redefine my statement to "those considered outsiders or oppressors by the suffering people must tread VERY carefully when they tell the stories of the suffering people." In the case of the American Indians, that might mean all of us immigrants residing in this land -- except perhaps the descendants of anybody brought here against their will (slaves)? Thanks for helping me to move along. I hope that is more clear; if not, keep asking.

Anybody else want to leap in and clarify the discussion? For more interesting reading, fellow fans of the Little House on the Prairie books can check out your discomfort factor as you read an "insider's" response to Ms. Wilder's depiction of Osage history.

Weekly Reader's Writing Magazine

I'm happy to announce that my article about creating a sense of place, "A Whole New World," is in this month's issue of Weekly Reader's Writing magazine, an excellent tool for young writers edited by the brilliant Sandhya Nankani. Check out the magazine's writing contest for teens called Take Me Away (.pdf download), scheduled to be judged by Ursula K. Le Guin. Also featured and interviewed in the October issue of Writing are two of my favorite authors, Isabel Allende and Gail Carson Levine, author of the new book Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly.

Sculpting a Novel

When it comes to art, you might think that writing a young adult novel and sculpting a masterpiece are two quite different processes. But as I'm slaving over the second story about Sparrow Righton, First Daughter, this description by a sculptor written in 1540 provided some encouragement:

For this work, a violent and continuous straining of all a man's strength is required, which brings great harm to his body and holds many definite dangers to his life. In addition, this art holds the mind of the artificer in suspense and fear regarding its outcome and keeps his spirit disturbed and almost continually anxious ... But, with all this, it is a profitable and skillful art and in large part delightful.

Source: V. Biringuccio, "The Bronze Founder," in La Pirotechnia (Venice, 1540).

Pass The TP And Will You Publish My Book?

I'll always be embarrassed about the time I approached a children's book editor in a ladies' room to ask if she'd heard anything in-house about a manuscript I'd sent to one of her colleagues. I knew I was crossing a line but desperation made the words come hurtling out of my mouth. Publisher's Weekly recently interviewed editors about the strangest place they've been pitched a book -- it's a cautionary tale for writer wannabes that's definitely worth a read. (Thankfully, they didn't include Cheryl Klein of Scholastic in their list of editors ...) Source: Ken Sheldon, a member of the NESCBWI listserv.

Tales From The Slush Pile

Looking for the skinny on the life of a children's book writer/illustrator? Tune into "Tales From The Slush Pile," an original comic strip by Ed Briant hosted by Publisher's Weekly.

Authenticity in Storytelling

When I present "Books Between Cultures" at conferences, I address the question of whether white authors have the right to create non-white protagonists. The simple answer? Yes. I want the right to use a white voice in my fiction, or a black one, or a Karenni, or a Bangladeshi. I don't want to write only about Bengali American girls growing up in California -- been there, done that. So why should I protest if a topnotch Korean writer features a Bengali American girl growing up in California and does it astoundingly well? Let the telling of and listening to one another's stories begin in the realm of kid lit and spread throughout the planet!

As with most resounding affirmations, though, there are caveats. Tread carefully, writers. If a particular community is processing a shared experience of suffering through the healing power of story, don't venture to speak on their behalf. If a community is voiceless, though, we can and should lean heavily on the gift of imaginative empathy to tell their stories. Always, love someone deeply from that community and listen well. Live among them, bear their burdens, help carry their crosses. Let them carry yours. And by all means, do your research.

For your reflection, here's an article in the African American Review by Nina Mikkelson about "outsider-writing." Consider, too, this review in the Houston Chronicle of 74-year-old white New Englander John Updike's new novel Terrorist about a young Arab-American:

The main character ... is an 18-year-old Muslim convert, son of an Irish-American mother and an Egyptian father who abandoned his wife and son early on. The young man, Ahmad, falls under the sway of a radical cleric in his gritty New Jersey hometown and gets caught up in a 9/11-type plot.

"A book that doesn't stir up any conversation or dispute probably isn't doing its job," Updike said. "Books are meant to wake us up, or present us with a different aspect of reality or different set of opinions ... If you're going to extend your range at all, you have to step out into the wonderful world of other people."

Although it's not coming out until June 2006, Kirkus and Booklist have already given the novel starred reviews. I'm looking forward to what one of the best storytellers of our time can achieve when it comes to taking the risk of crossing cultures and generations in fiction.

Raab Associates' Marketing Know-How

When it comes to marketing children's books, Susan Salzman Raab's site provides a host of fantastic resources. In a recent column, Raab Associates reported the results of a survey of popular blogs in the industry. To my delight, the Fire Escape made the list:

We polled several hundred reviewers, teachers and librarians asking the following questions: Are there blogs you read regularly, and how often? Do you host your own blog? Do you feel blogs are useful?

...For those of us in the book industry, of the people who responded to our online survey, twenty percent did not follow blogs at all. Of those who did follow blogs, most were periodic readers of one or two blogs. The two blogs most frequently noted were the Horn Book Editor's Rants and Raves by Roger Sutton, and Cynsations by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Both include views on industry news, award announcements and information on new books. Cynsations also features author interviews and reviews. Other sites that received several mentions were:

• The About.com children's book site, by Elizabeth Kennedy, which includes regular reviews and award announcements.

• Book Moot, hosted by Kelly Herold, which features reviews and news about book events.

• Chicken Spaghetti, which has news and reviews hosted by Susan Thomsen.

• The Fire Escape, which is a resource for cross-cultural books, movies and television written by Mitali Bose Perkins. (That's me!)

Resolution: Join a Crit Group

Last night a faithful group of young adult writers ventured through the cold to gather at the Newton Free Library. Our critique group, three men and six women, has been meeting for five years one Wednesday a month from 7 - 9 o'clock in the evening. During the first half-hour we share news, tips, lessons learned. We use the last three half-hour blocks to discuss 20-page submissions from three writers in the group which were sent to us at least a week before the meeting. We have two rules. First, the writer is not allowed to speak during his or her crit session. And second, the first five minutes are dedicated to praise and celebration of the work. My friend Karen Day is our leader, and she's just signed a two-book contract with Wendy Lamb of Random House for two YA novels called Treading Water and Tall Tales. They're fantastic; I feel an immense sense of pride over Karen's accomplishment because the nine of us discussed these books as they were being crafted. Here's a good article by Margot Finke on ex-Charlesbridge editor Harold Underdown's excellent Purple Crayon site about where to find crit groups.

Writing A Great Novel: An Editor's Tips

Recently, editor Cheryl Klein of Scholastic gave a talk at an SCBWI conference in Colorado called "Rules of Engagement: How to Get (and Keep!) A Reader Involved in Your Novel." Children Come First has released her talk as a free e-book, which they describe on their site:

1. The first part of the eBook talks about how to get and keep a reader involved in your novel. Klein lists the various things she sees in manuscripts that knock her out of the characters' brains or worlds—little tiny things, pacing questions, word choices even, that distract and dislodge her from the story.
2. The second part, How to Disengage Your Reader in Ten Easy Steps, goes through ten different things writers need to avoid doing if they want to keep the readers engaged in the story.
3. The eBook wraps up its third part with a transcript of the question and answer session from the conference.

Download and enjoy!

Ageless Writers

Here's a list of authors who published books when they were teens. And then there are authors like Harriet Doerr, who published her first novel when she was 73. Looks like a good story doesn't care how old you are before inviting you to tell it to the world.