Sarah Baker's Welcome To #SCBWIWinter22

Welcome to #SCBWIWinter22! This opening session featured Sarah Baker, new Executive Director of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, with help from ASL interpreter Lynne Kelly.

Sara thanked Lin Oliver for her many years of service as SCBWI's Executive Director since co-founding the Society. Congrats to Kim Turrisi, the new Director of Programming and Content. Kim is responsible for programming both National Conferences, digital workshop slates and special events. You can find out more about SCBWI staff on their updated "Who We Are" Page.

There are over 2000 of us attending (both live and asynchronously) the virtual SCBWI Winter Conference this year, spread out across the world. 42 different countries are represented!

Sarah says that although the SCBWI is hoping to resume in-person events in 2023, they still promise to continue to have substantial virtual content to help keep the events accessible.

The Golden Kite Gala, usually part of the SCBWI Winter Conference, will be a special separate event on March 15, open to the public. Jason Reynolds will be speaking at the event!

Sarah talked about the exciting upcoming events at the conference, and encouraged all to check out the Conference Portfolio Showcase, where over 200 members' artwork is on display.

Next up is the first keynote of the day, with New York Times best-selling and award-winning author, Kelly Yang!

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For those who want to know more about SCBWI's new Executive Director:

Sarah Baker is the Executive Director of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She joined the SCBWI staff in 2011, and most recently held the position of Associate Executive Director. Her career in children’s book publishing began at Penguin Young Readers Group, where she designed children’s books for six years. Sarah leads the SCBWI staff and works closely with the Board of Directors, the Advisory Council, and the official SCBWI volunteers. She graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara with a major in Studio Art and is a children’s book illustrator and ceramicist. Her favorite part of working for SCBWI is seeing the community flourish and the members thrive as artistic creators.

You can also find more about Sarah Baker here:

Sarah Baker's website: SarahLynnBaker.com

On Instagram: @sarahlynnbaker

On Twitter: @sarahlynnbaker

Welcome to the 2018 SCBWI Conference in Los Angeles

As is our tradition with SCBWI, we kicked off the conference with welcoming remarks from Steve Mooser and Lin Oliver, who founded this organization 47 years ago, when—miraculously, Lin Oliver was a zygote (look it up, chums).

Here are some numbers: 1,182 people are with us, 382 of whom have published more than 1,400 books.

People have traveled from 18 countries around the world and 48 of the 50 states (South Dakota and West Virginia are apparently in time-out).

In addition to all working on children's books, we have people who have day jobs as horse trainers, balloon artists, teachers, massage therapists, stenographers, and even private eyes.

Lin introduced us to the wonderful SCBWI staff, pictured. (They are larger in real life.)

We will be updating this blog all weekend with updates from keynotes, panels, breakout sessions, and more. And you can also follow Team Blog on Twitter:

@mbrockenbrough
@devas_t
@AdriaQuinones
@leewind
@cuppajolie
@jaimetem

And of course @scbwi itself.

Opening remarks by Lin Oliver & Sherman Alexie - some highlights

(Pictured above: Bartlett Bear about to blog, Sherman Alexie speaking, and SCBWI TEAM BLOG ready to live blog!)

Hi! Paula Yoo and her stuffed bear Bartlett blogging LIVE at the conference. As a former journalist, this is bringing back nightmare flashbacks of my newspaper days. I thought I left that world behind! LOL! Please follow our Twitter feeds for constant live tweets as well. Mine is at http://twitter.com/paulayoo. I've been tweeting non-stop with live photos so check 'em out! And you even get such SCBWI TEAM BLOG exclusives like what Jay Asher ate for breakfast! (Cheerios, coffee, a banana) and my special "Elizabeth Law Fun Facts" sprinkled throughout the day (did you know she was a lifeguard in high school?)

Right  now, Sherman Alexie is speaking so please check everyone else's Twitter tweets because I'm just blogging instead right now at our blogger table. (We get our own extension cords etc. All the other conference goers are jealous of our hi tech status! LOL!) BTW, I will post a live shot of Sheman Alexie on my Twitter page as soon as I post this blog.

A quick recap so far... the faculty line-up did their traditional "WORD PARADE" where each faculty member said one word that they wanted people to remember and think about during the conference. Sherman Alexie just wondered what the adult authors would do since he is also, of course, a famous adult novelist as well as a YA author. (He ruminated about what word Jonathan Franzen would say...!) 

Some words from the faculty included: "Intertwinkieularity" by Ingrid Law; "Joint Collaborative Process" by Dan Santat, Lisa Yee & Arthur Levine; "Greenhouse fire" by Sarah Davies; "YES!" (with a fist pump) by Nancy Sanders. Please check the Twitter pages of Lee Wind, Jolie Stekly, Suzanne Young & Jaime Temairik for more funny words!

Some statistical highlights from SCBWI Executive Director Lin Oliver:

-- A new record of conference enrollment - 911 registered this year!

-- 712 conference goers are women

-- 120 conference goers are men (LOL!)

-- 40 of 50 states represented (normally South Dakota has never sent someone here but this year, finally, there is a conference goer from South Dakota! She stood up to great applause!)

-- More than a dozen countries are also represented at the conference

-- Almost half of the concert goers have been published

-- Some interesting full-time jobs among conference goers, including a professional beekeeper ("I'm sure she's very sweet," Lin quipped) and one brave man who claimed his job title was "a handsome rogue."

Okay, time to listen more to Sherman Alexie and post a live Twitter pic. He's hilarious and insightful and everyone is laughing at his jokes as he talks about his childhood growing up on the reservation, his education, and how books opened a new world for him. It's both hilarious and poignant. Will post more blogs later with quotes, and fellow bloggers are live Tweeting some of his quotes so check it all out via Twitter and #scbwi09. Stay tuned for more blogs! 

Posted by Paula Yoo