The University of Connecticut’s Creative Writing Program is pleased to announce that it will hold a panel on writing and publishing children’s and young adult literature at 4 p.m. on Friday, November 13. The panel will take place in the Stern Lounge, Room 217 of the Philip E. Austin Building, 215 Glenbrook Road, Storrs, CT 06269.
The panel participants will include writers Sandra Horning, Caragh O’Brien, Dana Meachen Rau, and Pegi Deitz Shea, as well as Alexander Slater, an agent for Trident Media.
Sandra Horning’s picture book The Giant Hug won an IRA Children’s Choice Award and was a Junior Library Guild selection. In 2014, Sandra was awarded a James Marshall Fellowship to conduct research in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. Her other books include The Biggest Pumpkin and Chicks. She lives with her husband, two sons, eight chickens, and three ducks in Chaplin, Connecticut.
Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, Caragh M. O’Brien grew up in a family of seven children with parents who ran a toy store and loved books. She earned her BA in physics from Williams College and her MA in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. After publishing half a dozen romance novels, she turned to teaching high school English and later to writing for young adults. She is the author of the Birthmarked trilogy, which has won numerous awards, and The Vault of Dreamers, the beginning of a new young adult trilogy from Macmillan. Caragh now lives and writes full-time from her home in Connecticut.
Dana Meachen Rau received an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has published more than three hundred books in a variety of genres, such as early readers, picture books, biographies, and nonfiction. Some of her awards and recognitions include: the Association for Library Services to Children Notable Children’s Books of 2014; Booklist Top 10 Early Literacy Series of 2009; and Science Books and Film Magazine Best Books of 2005 and 2009. In 2011, she received the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism’s Art Fellowship Grant.
Pegi Deitz Shea is the author of more than four hundred articles, essays, and poems for adults and children. She teaches writing to adults and young adults through the Institute of Children’s Literature and children’s literature and creative writing at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. She has presented at more than four hundred schools, libraries, and conferences around the country. She lives in Northeast Connecticut with her husband and two children.
Alexander Slater graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2007. He began his career in publishing that year with the Maria Carvainis Agency, first as an intern, and then as an assistant. He has been with Trident Media Group since 2010, where he started as the assistant to agents Kimberly Whalen and Scott Miller. Moving on from there, he spent two years representing the entire agency’s children’s, middle grade, and young adult titles in the foreign market, attending books fairs in Bologna, London, and Frankfurt. He is now building his list domestically at Trident, while keeping his focus on these areas. As a Foreign Rights Agent, he has sold international rights for authors such as R. J. Palacio, Louis Sachar, Jessica Sorensen, L. J. Smith, Rebecca Donovan, and many others.
The panel, sponsored by the University of Connecticut Creative Writing Program, is free and open to the public. For more information on the Creative Writing Program, please visit the program’s website at http://creativewriting.uconn.edu/.
For more information, contact: Erick Piller at erick.piller@uconn.edu