cj Sez: Lyrical
Pens sends HUGE congratulations to the young author winners of this year’s Annual Tracy Hurley
Memorial Writing Contest, sponsored by the Mobile Writers’ Guild:
First Place: Heather Jajeh, “Phoenix Turns the
Double Stouthearted”
Second Place: Julie Jajeh, “The Mystery of the Bank
Robbery”
Third Place: Mallory Edwards, “The Life of Elanea”
Tracy would have been so excited and happy to read your wonderful
pieces. She
The awards were given out during the 2016 Young Authors’
Conference held at Mobile’s West Regional Library. The conference
is an annual event sponsored by the Metro Mobile Reading Council. The keynote
speaker was nonfiction, science, and nature writer Heather L. Montgomery,
author of “Wild Discoveries: Wacky New Animals.” Her bio on Goodreads says Ms.
Montgomery “writes about science and
nature for kids. Her subject matter ranges from snake tongues to spider silk to
snail poop.”
As you can imagine from that Goodreads description, she is a
dynamic speaker, and she involves her young audiences by having them do hands-on examinations of things that inspired her books. She said that all of her well-researched books were inspired by
a question about something she’s seen…including a dead venomous snake! (Do not try that at home, folks. Dead snakes still have venom in their fangs.) Her
number one rule for writing: “Don't do boring,” and she wasn’t. I do believe I
learned a lot…no exaggeration.
I was thrilled to assist with a small breakout group of
third through fifth graders. These talented kids awed me with glimpses into their
amazing imaginations as they created several versions of an opening—that all-important hook
that invites readers into the rest of the book.
During the afternoon, the library hosted the 2016 Teen
Writing Fair, co-sponsored by the Metro Mobile Reading Council and the Mobile
Writers’ Guild. Ms. Montgomery gave an
abbreviated presentation and again passed around unique items. (I hoped the thing that passed through my hands was
a large, brown mushroom and not a "cow pie.") Afterwards, a few aspiring authors read their short
pieces at open mic, and then the teen writers strolled around tables, meeting
and interviewing a room full of local authors.
I was thoroughly impressed by each writer I heard and spoke
with and know I met a bunch of young authors headed for the New York Times
best-selling list.
How about you? Have you been able to mentor a young author?
If you want to write about your experience, drop me a note. I’d love to schedule
you a blog date.
That’s it for today. You-all guys keep on keeping on and I’ll
try to do the same.
cj
cjpetterson@gmail.com
How fun, and how wonderful you participated in that. I just last week answered a 5-question interview from a local middle school student for a year-long project she's doing on being a writer, but that's the only time I've done anything like that.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words cj! It was inspiring working with those young writers!
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