Lin Oliver's Welcome to #NY21SCBWI

It's virtual, but it's still a warm welcome to the SCBWI Winter Conference.

Lin Oliver, co-founder and Executive Director of SCBWI welcomes us all (lower box), with sign language interpreter Susannah Jaffe pictured in the higher box.

Welcome to #NY21SCBWI!

There are over 4,700 of us attending (both live and asynchronously). Over 1,000 of us are already published, and we're from all over the world!

Over 2,000 of attendee writers have manuscripts in the gallery where for the next two weeks, over 200 editors and agents will be exploring those.

And "hundreds and hundreds" of attendee artists have submitted art to the portfolio showcase - the Grand Prize winners will be announced tomorrow. That's available for all of us to peruse here.

There's a bookstore where you can purchase the books of the conference faculty - and it supports independent bookstores! - https://bookshop.org/shop/SCBWI

Lin sets the tone of the conference, suggesting we imagine we're all sitting around a table, artists and authors, with common goals, wanting to be both vulnerable and safe, and committed to creating great books for kids.

And with that, we're off to the first keynote, Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson, "The Picture Book as a Perfect Marriage Between Author and Illustrator"!