PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award

Pleased to announce submissions are now open for the 2012 PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Children's Book Discovery Award.

Entrants must be residents of New England who have not been published in any genre including adult fiction and non-fiction (with the exception of print and online magazines, anthologies and self-publishing), and the submitted work (or another work) must not be under contract to be published.

Winners will present their work to the public at the PEN New England Children’s Book Discovery Evening in May 2012, and editors at major publishing houses will read winning manuscripts. In past years, editors from Knopf, Candlewick, and Houghton Mifflin have read the winning submissions. Over ten past winners have gone on to land publishing contracts with major houses.

For more information on submissions, please see the full guidelines at http://www.pen-ne.org/

Web show today

I'll be on A Cup of Coffee & A Good Book, Jennifer Walker's web show, today at 12:30 EST. Here's the URL:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/jennifer-walker/2011/08/03/a-cup-of-coffee-and-a-good-book

OHOL cited in Memorial Day Article

The Other Half of Life was cited in a Memorial Day article "Books That Help Children Know About War" in the Charleston Post & Courier:

http://m.postandcourier.com/postcourier/db_95417/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=He9FDyhJ&detailindex=1&pn=1&ps=3&full=true

PEN Susan Bloom Award Winners

Congrats to this year's PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award Winners:

TARA SULLIVAN for her young adult novel, Golden Boy
ANNIE CARDI for her young adult novel, Queen of the Air

Please come celebrate the winners and hear them read from their promising manuscripts!

Sunday, May 15, 2011, 6:30 p.m. THE AMPHITHEATRE
Lesley University, Cambridge
(University Hall, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue)

Fenway Fiction Reading

I'll be joining several Boston writers on the eve of opening day (Thurs, March 31) for readings from Fenway Fiction III at a Jam'n Java in Arlington. Please come!

See the link below for details!


http://www.acarts.org/writers_series.php

My first Skype

I did my first video skype with a school in North Carolina today. Lots of authors I know have been doing skypes for a long time now--I'm late to the game! I spoke with the sixth grade. It was lots of fun and I hope that I'll get to do more skypes in the future!

Mother-Daughter Book Club

I had the privilege this past weekend of being invited to a mother-daughter book club that read THE OTHER HALF OF LIFE. I had so much fun meeting these wonderful women and their impressive daughters! They started the book club when their girls were in third grade. One of the first books they chose was THE MAGIC TREEHOUSE. They alternate between houses and usually make something to eat that has to do with each book.

Each girl writes discussion questions on pieces of paper and they put the questions in a bowl. Then they pass the bowl around and the girls pick the questions, answer, and discuss them.

They had great questions for my book and I really enjoyed discussing the characters, their motivations, the time period, and the history of the St. Louis with them.

Then we enjoyed a feast of goulash, challah bread, bananas, pineapple and strawberries!

It was a great time!

Holocaust archives go digital

I just read that Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, is teaming up with Google to make its photographs and documents interactive and searchable on the Internet.

A collection of 130,000 photos can now be searched directly from Google, using standard keywords and other data that make it far easier than in the past to find the desired information.

Viewers can also add their own comments, stories and document.

This sounds very neat. It's amazing how the internet has opened up so much in terms of doing historical research or researching one's family history.

http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive/

New Monument in Nova Scotia commemorates St. Louis

Monument commemorates Jewish tragedy


The Associated Press
Thursday, January 20, 2011; 4:20 PM
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- A new monument has been unveiled in eastern Canada marking the country's decision to turn away a steamship carrying Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939.

The luxury liner MS St. Louis was first turned away by Cuba, then the United States and finally Canada before returning to Europe just before the outbreak of war.

Of the 900 German Jews aboard, almost a third died in the Holocaust.

The sculpture by Daniel Libeskind is called the Wheel of Conscience and was unveiled Thursday in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Libeskind says his work tells the story of a tragic, dark period of Canadian history where anti-Semitism and anti-immigration policies led to the deaths of hundreds of people.