Here are some highlights from our conversation with award-winning, bestselling author Liz Garton Scanlon:

📚 Why setting is not relevant only in hsitorical fiction or fantasy and how it impacts every single experience of ourselves and our characters

📚 Setting as context, and reverse engineering elements of craft

📚Honoring the rhythms of being a s l o w writer

📚 Stories emerging in a dreamscape

📚 How what we know about our fledgling stories becomes self-perpetuating; ask the questions questions, follow the pathways

📚 What to do with envy in a publishing career

Liz Garton Scanlon is the author of numerous beloved books for young people, including picture books Frances in the Country; Kate, Who Tamed the Wind; One Dark Bird; the Caldecott honored All the World, and many others, illustrated by some of the very best artists in the business. She's also co-authored several books with her pal Audrey Vernick, including the hilarious Bob, Not Bob, and the upcoming World’s Best Class Plant. Scanlon’s middle grade novels are The Great Good Summer and Lolo's Light, and her delightful chapter book series Bibsy Cross debuted in 2024. Liz has taught at Austin Community College, the Writing Barn, the Writers’ League of Texas, and at countless schools and conferences. She currently serves on the faculty and is faculty co-chair of the Writing for Children and Young Adults program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, but lives in Austin, Texas.

Liz's Facebook: Liz Garton Scanlon

Liz's IG @LizGardenSalad

Liz's Website: www.LizGartonScanlon.com

EPISODE LINKS:

• Snag your copy of Liz's irresistable Bibsy Cross!
• Joanna's latest A City Full of Santas is out TODAY! Get your copy at your local independent bookstore HERE!
• That Instagram post we couldn't stop blabbing about....

Highlights from this episode include:

• Starting with a story and discovering theme along the way
• Propping up a story with telephone poles and burying the wires in between
• Leaving space for readers to lean in and discover things for themselves

Minh Lê is the award-winning author of household favorites Drawn Together (winner of the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature), Real to Me, The Blur, Lift (an Eisner Award nominee). He also writes popular middle grade graphic novels, including Green Lantern books and Enlighten Me. He is also a has been a contributor to a number of national publications including the New York Times, The Horn Book, HuffPost, NPR, Book Riot, and Reading Rainbow, and was until very recently, on the Board of We Need Diverse Books. He's also on the faculty of the Hamline MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.

IG: @bottomshelfbks

We're thrilled to introduce our first guest of Season 2, the brilliant author Laurel Snyder. Highlights in this episode include:

• Theme bumping against character, setting, plot and more in order to find its path
• Writing from the heart in a capitalist system
• Writing like a cook, not a baker
• Why the outline changes the minute she starts writing
• The realities of loving, and envying!, authors like Kate Messner

Episode links:

Laurel's episode on the Commonplace Podcast with Rachel Zucker

The Ezra Klein Show podcast episode with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy

Laurel Snyder is the beloved author of many picture books and novels for children, including National Book Award nominee Orphan Island, the Geisel Award winner Charlie & Mouse, and the Sydney Taylor Award winner The Longest Night. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she teaches in Hamline University’s MFA in writing for children and young adults program. She lives in Atlanta with her family and can be found online at laurelsnyder.com.

IG: @ohmylorelai

In which we share ways we've taken our KLHH guests' advice to live life as inspiration for craft, and attempt to buckle down for this upcoming year - because the year actually follows the academic calendar, right?

We've got things cooking for you this season, and we hope we can find ways to connect with our listeners more. One way you can do that is by dropping your questions for upcoming guests on our KidlitHappy Hour IG! We're excited to be back for Season 2 - we've already got some gems ready for you!

It’s our final episode of the inaugural season of Kidlit Happy Hour!!! Join us as we surprise one another with favorite moments from each episode, reflect on the season, and talk through where we’re going from here.

We will officially be back in August with our second season that is PACKED TO THE BRIM with brilliant minds across kidlit. In the meantime, be sure to follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen and catch up on any episodes you missed!

• The #1 way to connect to your audience
• Claribel's tried and true mantra in publishing
• Risks and benefits of sharing your writing journey online
• Why writing your interests into your stories is a smart bet
• The joys of trolling (not the kind you may be thinking) and why she loves receiving "hate mail" from readers
• The brilliant approach to making self-promo work for you
• Why supporting the writing community is everything, and focusing on online conversation vs. discourse
• Ways to cultivate in-person community
• What it's like drafting in Windings 3...

Some highlights from our conversation with marketing guru Emily Lyman:

• Reframing self-promotion as a celebration with your community
• Individuals understand their “brand”
• Good marketing IS storytelling
• Why sharing your values, even if controversial, generates more loyal connections and community
• Empathetic marketing

Emily spent nearly a decade working in-house with global publishers such as Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster managing both corporate and title marketing initiatives. Emily is now the CEO and Founder of Branch and Bramble, a digital marketing company. As an award-winning data artist, Emily specializes in blending data with heart and values to create meaningful audience connections for brand partners which include Patagonia, Paramount, and Penguin Random House. She's worked with companies with household names to individual authors just trying to get their books out in the world. She also runs the Mountain Brook Inn in the Catskills in upstate New York.

Branch and Bramble

Book influencer guide

IG @emilylyman

LinkedIn @Emily Lyman

Here are select highlights from our conversation with NYtimes bestselling, award-winning author Cynthia Leitich Smith:

• Story as a circle, gathering, and communal effort
• Figuring out where your voice can best serve and where your heart beats with hope
• Building on “and” instead of “vs”
• Inviting people into the conversation AND being a part of the conversation
• Social media dynamics as both tricky and powerful
• Approaches to book promotion that start locally
• How we can never surrender progress made by generations before
• Only asking kids to take on battles we’re willing to engage in ourselves

Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee) is a NYTimes bestseller, 2024 Southern Mississippi Medallion Winner, and 2021 NSK Neustadt Laureate. Her titles include HEARTS UNBROKEN, which won an American Indian Youth Literature Award, the anthology ANCESTOR APPROVED, an Indigenous PETER PAN retelling titled SISTERS OF THE NEVERSEA, HARVEST HOUSE, which is one of five Bram Stoker Award® Nominees for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel, and—the BLUE STARS series, also by Kekla Magoon and Molly Murakami. Cynthia looks forward to ON A WING AND A TEAR for middle graders. She is the author-curator of Heartdrum, a Native-focused imprint of HarperChildren’s.

Website: https://cynthialeitichsmith.com/

IG: @cynthialeitichsmith