Last Professional Series Meeting of the season!

For our last professional series meeting of the year on Tuesday, May 11, we have two great speakers lined up:

Lenae Nofziger, who's presentation is called: HELP! I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO CALL THIS! — HOW TO FIND THE PERFECT TITLE. A great book title is an invitation that readers can’t refuse. But how do you create such a title?

This workshop will focus on ways to generate and evaluate titles by analyzing those of existing books for children and young adults. Lenae teaches creative writing and childhood literature at Northwest University. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University, where she specialized in poetry, a genre that requires frequent title generation. A number of her poems have been published in literary journals, and not one of them was called “Untitled.” She is currently writing two young-adult novels.

Then, we'll meet meet Karen Cushman, who'll tell us how she finally came to write after years of talking about it a speech titled IN DREAMS BEGIN RESPONSIBILITIES.

Here's a recap of the blog tour we did last month with Karen:

Kim Baker, our assistant regional adviser, asked her some questions about her writing process. Read up on them here.

Laurie Thompson, our co-regional adviser, has a blog about nonfiction--something that overlaps plenty with the historical fiction Karen writes so beautifully. Read it here.

Kirby Larson, a colleague and Newbery honor winner, has both a review of the book AND an interview AND she is giving away an ARC to the person who invents the best Meggy Swann-style curse. Here's her review. And here's her interview.

Emilie Bishop--who contributes to the historical fiction blog Damsels in Regress--has a great interview tailored to people working in that genre. You can read the whole thing here.

And finally, Allie Costa, a California gal who writes the popular book-review blog Slayground, has an interview with Karen about all of her books. You'll find that one here.

Our Professional Series Meetings take place at Seattle Pacific University - Demaray Hall, Room 150. Registration at 6:45 p.m., program at 7:00 p.m. Get Map and Directions here. Meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month.