Free Virtual Meetings

In the Writer’s Kitchen with Shutta Crum

Saturday, June 20, 2020

2:00-3:30 pm

A link to the meeting recording can be found here. 

Shutta’s handout can be found here.

The recording and handout will be available until July 20th.

Come and peek over Shutta Crum’s shoulder as she mixes up just the right ingredients to create satisfying picture books, novels and poems. Shutta will let us in on her favorite spicy literary techniques, discuss how to decode story recipes, how to stir music into your writing, how to choose just the freshest/best word choices and what to do when you’ve dropped the turkey on the floor (re: Julia Child). Revise! All of this will be covered in addition to discussing that special touch that must be in every book before we serve it to a young reader. If time allows, we’ll have a short writing exercise. (For that, please print out a short poem you’ve written, or single page of a picture book, or an important paragraph or two from a piece of prose.) There will be a handout and time for Q & A.

Shutta Crum is the author of several middle-grade novels, more than a dozen picture books, and many poems and magazine articles. THUNDER-BOOMER! was an ALA and a Smithsonian “Notable Book.” MINE! was reviewed by the N.Y. Times Book Review as “a delightful example of the drama and emotion that a nearly wordless book can convey.” Her books have made Bank Street College lists as well as state award lists. In 2005 she was invited to read BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE at the White House Easter Egg Roll. And in 2010 she presented to children at the Dept. of Defense schools throughout Japan. Her first collection of poems (for adults) was published this year, titled: WHEN YOU GET HERE. Her website is www.shutta.com. Follow her at www.facebook.com/Shuttacrum, or on Twitter @Shutta.