Lee Bennett Hopkins Wraps Things Up...

The final conference presentation with from literary luminary/poet Lee Bennett Hopkins. He recited poems. He had on a fabulous shirt that not many people could pull off. He made me tear up. And that was that. The SCBWI Annual Summer Conference in Los Angeles came to an end.

The only things left was the autograph party. (Hooray for cupcakes!)


Conference-goers standing in line. (Don't worry--there were plenty of cupcakes left for all of them after the autographing ended.)


John Green signing his Printz Award-winning novel Looking for Alaska (which I'm in the middle of reading right now--and it's so good.)


Erin Vincent, showing off the cover of her YA memoir Grief Girl. (In the hallway earlier in the day someone mistook me for Erin and excitedly waved me over and asked, "Are you the author of Grief Girl?!" I hope that fan of Erin's work got to talk to her at the autograph party.)


Ellen Wittlinger prepares to sign her novel Hard Love. (Notice she's got her own stack of books.)


Lisa Yee holding my copy of Millicent Min, Girl Genius. Lisa's table was my last stop (got my autographs in alphabetical order) before I hit the cupcakes.

Ellen Wittlinger: Writing the GLBTQ Book...


As the author of a number of books featuring GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning) characters including Hard Love and Parrotfish, her latest, Ellen Wittlinger maintains that a writer does not have to be gay to write gay characters, but must possess the skills to write with thoughtfulness and do some research.

Wittlinger expressed the need to book for young readers with GLBTQ characters beyond coming out stories (although those are important as well). Her goal is to normalize homosexuality and transsexuality and show it as one of the many ways we are different from one another. She says she feels we lull ourselves into thinking that homophobia is going away and said that there are much higher rates of skipping school and suicide among GLBTQ kids. She's actually been dis-invited from industry events when organizers find out she's written about gay characters and has been instructed not to discuss her books that include gay characters while doing school visits. (She agrees to not base her speech on such books but will always answer questions from young readers in the audience when they reference her GLBTQc haracters.) Very interesting discussion.