Winner winner, avocado-toast dinner!! (It was Portland after all).
THE TRAGICALLY TRUE ADVENTURES OF KIT DONOVAN won an Oregon Book Award! Specifically the ELOISE JARVIS MCGRAW AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE. (Want to learn more about Eloise Jarvis McGraw?Just click here).
I’m still stunned, but mostly I’m incredibly grateful.
The day to day of writing is mostly a solitary thing, but the the job of getting a book out into the world requires a lot of support. I’m so grateful for my friends, my family, my agent, and my editor who all helped me write a book that people enjoy. It really does take a village. I only hope I give as good as I get.
I shared a lot of thanks in my speech that night – a speech I never imagined I’d have to give. I thought I’d share it here on my blog, too, for those of you who didn’t make it to the awards ceremony. *Note: this may not perfectly match the deer-in-the-headlights, stammering speech I actually delivered in a state of shock that night. 🙂 But it’s pretty close to what I hope I said.
“I really didn’t expect it could get any better than seeing my little book on a list with so many authors whose work I enjoy and admire. To my fellow Children’s Lit. Finalists: Kurt, Diane, Elizabeth, and Cynthia – your work is everything that is wonderful in kidlit. I’m honored to be in your company tonight.
As my character Kit learns in my book, you may start your journey alone, but it really takes the help of friends – both likely and unlikely – to get you where you need to go. And with that in mind, I have some folks to thank:
First Literary Arts. You championed this book far longer than you might know. First, with your Author Tours that brought workshops led by real life authors to my little town on the other end of the state. Then with a generous fellowship that helped me revise my story into something an incredible agent and later an editor would want. And now this. I can’t even begin to express how truly grateful I am.
Second, I’d like to thank our glorious community of Oregon Authors. I don’t know what writers are like everywhere else, but writers in Oregon are amazing. *Hardworking, talented, kind, and incredibly generous and supportive. I’m forever grateful to you for letting me into your organizations, for answering my emails and posts with grace and kindness, and for being so danged inspiring. It’s an honor to be part of your community and a gift that I get to call so many of you friends.
And finally I’d like to thank my husband John who believed in this book from the beginning – and who does all the really hard stuff – like cooking dinner and navigating Portland traffic. None of this happens without you.
Thank you all so much. I’m stunned and beyond thrilled.”
*I may have said freaking amazing at the event – because they really are.
It was a pretty spectacular evening spent with pretty spectacular people. You can read about the other Oregon Book Award winners at Oregon Live and check out the other finalists in the Children’s Book category here.
Thanks again to Literary Arts! You made my year.
Today I’m shining the Author Spotlight on Adrienne Young and her debut novel SKY IN THE DEEP.
Adrienne Young is a born and bred Texan turned California girl. She is a foodie with a deep love of history and travel and a shameless addiction to coffee. When she’s not writing, you can find her on her yoga mat, scouring antique fairs for old books, sipping wine over long dinners, or disappearing into her favorite art museums. She lives with her documentary filmmaker husband and their four little wildlings beneath the West Coast sun.
Today I’m shining the Author Spotlight on Shaila Patel and her latest novel Fighting Fate.
As an unabashed lover of all things happily-ever-after, Shaila Patel’s younger self would finish reading her copy of Cinderella and chuck it across the room because it didn’t mention what happened next. Now she writes from her home in the Carolinas and dreams up all sorts of stories with epilogues. A member of the Romance Writers of America and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, she’s a pharmacist by training, a medical office manager by day, and a writer by night. SOULMATED, her debut novel and the first book in the Joining of Souls Series, was the winner of the 2015 Chanticleer Book Reviews Paranormal Awards for Young Adult. Book 2, FIGHTING FATE releases April 5th, 2018. She loves craft beer, tea, and reading in cozy window seats—but she’ll read anywhere. You might find her sneaking in a few paragraphs at a red light or gushing about her favorite books online.
When her best friend’s house is threatened with foreclosure, young Annie Jenkins is full of ideas to save the home: selling her appendix on eBay, winning the lottery, facing down the bankers . . . anything to keep Jason from moving. But Jason’s out-of-work dad blows up at the smallest things, and he’s not very happy with Annie’s interventions, which always seem to get them into more trouble. But when Annie tracks a lost treasure to Jason’s backyard, she’s sure the booty will be enough to save Jason’s family. Pirate treasure in the Midwest seems far-fetched, even to Annie, but it could be the answer to all their problems. Now all she has to do is convince Jason. As the two hunt for answers and the pressure gets to Jason and his family, Annie discovers that the best-laid plans aren’t always enough and there are worse things than moving away.
Today I’m shining the Author Spotlight on Sarah Nicole Smetana and her debut novel THE MIDNIGHTS
Sarah Nicole Smetana grew up in Orange, California, where she wrote songs, played in a few bands, and successfully pilfered all of her parents’ best vinyl records. She received her BFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University and her MFA in Fiction from The New School. Currently, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their three-legged cat. The Midnights (HarperTeen/HarperCollins) is her first novel.
Twelve-year-old Chloe Ashton is an only child living in the remote wilderness of Oregon. She spends her days happily exploring the forests around her home, and is astonished to find the animals seem to know her, to follow her, and even try to speak to her. When a family tragedy results in Chloe’s abduction and sale to the vagabonds, she is taken deeper into the woods, and finds out just how much the animals know. 
Award-winning biographer Elizabeth Rusch and two-time Caldecott Honor–recipient Marjorie Priceman team up to tell the inspiring story of the invention of the world’s most popular instrument: the piano.
Cynthia Rylant and Brendan Wenzel explore the beauty and tenacity of life.
Life in a 1905 Nevada mining town is not easy for any thirteen-year-old. For Kit Donovan, it seems downright impossible. When her mother dies of a fever, Kit is certain she is to blame. Guilt-ridden, she is determined to honor her promises to her mother—namely to be a “proper lady.” Only being a lady is tougher than it looks. When Kit discovers that Papa’s boss at the gold mine (the menacing and self-serving Mr. Granger) is profiting from unsafe working conditions in the mine, she convinces her dad to speak out. But sometimes doing the right thing leads to trouble. Now Kit must find a way to expose Granger’s misdeeds before it’s too late. Aided by an eccentric woman, a Shoshone boy, and a drunken newspaperman, Kit puts her big mouth and all the life skills she’s learned from reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to work. With a man’s hat and a printing press, Kit defies threats of violence and discovers that justice doesn’t always look like she imagined it would.
About two months ago I had a flash of an idea. One of those flashes that come unbidden and out of nowhere and demand you pay attention to them. So I paid attention because I learned long ago that these flashes are gifts – from the universe or the muse or just some part of the unconscious that’s particularly tuned in at that moment – I really don’t know. But I do know that they always lead somewhere interesting. This time the flash led me to do something I never thought I’d do: I wrote a picture book!
It’s Mississippi in the summer of 1955, and Rose Lee Carter can’t wait to move north. For now, she’s living with her sharecropper grandparents on a white man’s cotton plantation. Then, one town over, an African American boy, Emmett Till, is killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. When Till’s murderers are unjustly acquitted, Rose realizes that the South needs a change and that she should be part of the movement. Linda Jackson’s moving debut seamlessly blends a fictional portrait of an African American family and factual events from a famous trial that provoked change in race relations in the United States.
