Farrin Jacobs and Denene Millner: Editors Panel #scbwiWinter22

 

Editor Farrin Jacobs

Farrin Jacobs is editorial director and vp at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She has edited a variety of fiction and nonfiction, including New York Times best sellers Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History, Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World, and Little Legends: Exceptional Men in Black History by author/illustrator Vashti Harrison;  I Am Malala and We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai, as well as the picture book Malala’s Magic Pencil;  I Will Always Write Back by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda with Liz Welch; and Printz-winner Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta.

Editor (and author) Denene Millner

Denene Millner is the editorial director of Denene Millner Books, an imprint that publishes stories featuring Black children and families, by Black authors and illustrators. In her imprint’s debut year, Denene published Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, one of the most decorated picture books of 2018. Her debut list at S&S earned a second Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award Honor for Illustration when she published Cozbi A. Cabrera’s Me & Mama, along with the NAACP-nominated Just Like a Mama by Alice Faye Duncan, and Wings of Ebony, a YA fantasy book that debuted on the New York Times best seller’s list. Denene is also a six-time New York Times best-selling author, Emmy Award-nominated TV show host, and award-winning journalist who has written 31 books, among them the picture book Early Sunday Morning. The Atlanta-based editor and mom of two is interested in stories that celebrate the humanity of Black children. (FYI - Denene is pronounced De-neen)

Highlights from what Farrin shared:

"I love voice. Especially for YA and MG - I love a sad story told by funny people." On the NF side, Farrin is looking for stories that haven't been told before, and is looking to lift girls' voices.

Illustrators: "Put your portfolio on your website." Especially if you want to illustrate picture books, make sure you're showing you can do sequential art and tell a story.

Common denominator of authors Farrin works with: Kind people.

If we're asking to revise and see again before acquisition, "we're serious." If Farrin puts time into it, to give notes, it's with the hope of setting it up for success for acquisitions.

On writing across age, subjects, genre categories: on the business side, it can be challenging - if we're trying to develop you as a YA writer, and suddenly you have a MG, it can be hard. Book buyers at retailers have to buy in... How many books can you produce a year. Are you over-publishing? That said, if you're amazing at all the things, we want to be there for that.

Farrin also spoke about the tension between creativity and commerce, the "collaborative" acquisitions path books take at Little Brown, how sometimes they pass things to other editors if not right for them, and much more.

Highlights from what Denene shared:

"I really love it when I get a story that speaks to the mission of Denene Millner books." Books about joy, bonding and loving with family. Pet peeve is that most of children's book with African American characters have been focused on Black firsts, or Civil Rights, or slavery... "As a mom, I didn't want to read those stories to my kids before bedtime" Bonus: "if it's really beautiful and I can look at it and see art and imagine illustrations... that makes me really happy."

Acquisitions is more straightforward - as part of Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, Denene runs it by Justin Chanda, and if they agree, Denene can make an offer. 

Denene does look at unsolicited manuscripts, and loves social media for authors and illustrators. 

"I love working with illustrators... it's crazy as hell and beautiful to see." The collaboration can be magical. 

On working with authors: please remember Denene is "trying my best to help you make this book the best book it can possibly be." Denene is a writer as well, who has written 34 books and been through this before, so understands the journey. 

Denene publishes exclusively African American authors and illustrators. Loves books that stretch outside New York City, outside northeast. And she applauds working across age, subjects, and genre categories - as it's something she does herself.

Denene also spoke about how things have changed since the pandemic and the racial pandemic - Black Lives Matter - she's seeing lots more manuscripts of Black folks celebrating joy. Now she's competing with other publishers for those stories. It's "a trend that makes me very happy. And a trend that makes readers very happy."

The Editors Panel is Happening Now!

 

The editors panel - clockwise from top right, author curator (Heartdrum/HarperCollins) Cynthia Leitich Smith, Emma Ledbetter (Abrams Books for Young Readers), Michelle Frey (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers), Farrin Jacobs (Little Brown Books for Young Readers), Denene Millner (Denene Millner Books/Simon and Schuster), and ASL interpreter Lynne Kelly.

Denene Millner - Love Letters for Black Children: The Importance of Diverse Books

Denene Millner is the Editor of her eponymous imprint, which has published the award-winning Crown: Ode to the Fresh Cut. She is the author/co-author of thirty-one books, including six NY Times bestsellers. Her background is of an award-winning journalist, magazine editor, and parenting columnist. 

To open her session, Denene shared a montage of videos where Toni Morrison addresses the false construct of race, racism and whiteness centering itself at the expense of those around them. Denene said that Toni's Song of Solomon was the first book she read by a Black woman and she was in college.

Denene Millner

When Denene's daughter was an infant in 1999, finding books featuring Black children by Black authors were not plentiful. She found books by the Pinckney family of creators, Eloise Greenfield, and Just Us Books. It prompted her to begin writing stories that reflected Black children's lives and starting her My Brown Baby website to help people know her books and those of others existed.

Denene left the audience with several takeaways. Here are a few:

• Trust Black storytellers. She illustrated this point by sharing an upcoming title, Just Like A Mama, a picture book written by Alice Faye Duncan and illustrated by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow. The picture book centers fictive kinship, A common reality in the Black community where story focuses on a Black child cared for a Black woman who is not her blood relative and has not legally adopted her.
• Culturally Competent Editors Matter. Don't be afraid to reference Black culture. She shared the story of a white editor who wondered why an angel in Crown needed to be Black when "angels are angels." The audience nodded in agreement when she relayed this exchange and how she shared with the editor that most angels depicted in books and sold as statues are white not Black. But Black angels exist and need to represented.



Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut won
2018 Newbery Honor,
Caldecott Honor, and
Coretta Scott King Honors
 

• It's Bigger Than a Hashtag. Black lives matter every day. Books need to reflect that. 

Denene's imprint only publishes books created by Black authors and illustrators because fewer opportunities exist for Black creators to tell their stories for children. She has dedicated her work to improve that. She is open to submissions.

Find out more about Denene and the launch of her imprint, follow her on Twitter.

Editor Panel: Denene Millner

Denene Millner

Denene Millner is the editor of Denene Millner Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint that publishes books featuring African American children. In its debut year, Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, won Newbery and Caldecott honors and the Kirkus Prize for Children’s Literature. Her latest offering, The Fresh Princess, inspired by Will Smith’s iconic character, debuted in April. 

Denene Millner started in journalism—politics and entertainment—then moved into magazines, and has also written a big old stack of thirty books. She's interested in books that speak to the everyday experiences of black children, and started an imprint at Agate Publishing. The publication of Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut changed everything for her, and soon led to Simon & Schuster knocking on her door.

Cover image for CROWN by Gordon C. James

She publishes exclusively African American authors and illustrators, and is not interested in books rooted in history or trauma - those books are needed, and are being published, but she focuses on black children and families having everyday life experiences, because those stories are still so underrepresented in our industry. Black kids, and really all kids, need and deserve those stories, written and illustrated by those authors and illustrators.

An example of what she's looking for: Crown hit it on all levels. She wants to see the things that no one else will publish, which is how she connected with Derrick Barnes and Crown. She wants books that portray Black kids' lives simply and purely as they are. That kind of honest, straightforward depiction of ordinary lives is very easy to find when the books' creators and characters are white, and those stories are just as real and just as universal for Black kids. She wants books where the moments and details of those young Black lives don't exist solely within the context of their explicitly defined blackness; they just are.

She's specifically looking for new authors, because she believes in the importance of providing those opportunities for Black book creators, especially illustrators. Crown is Gordon C. James's very first illustrated book, and it's a masterpiece. It's impossible to argue with the results of her commitment to finding new talent; it's already resulted in a game-changing thunderbolt of a book.

Follow Denene Millner on Twitter and Instagram