Young Authors Find Their Voices
Students attend Young Authors Conference in Staples, Minn.
Over 300 students from central Minnesota schools got firsthand experiences writing, learning, and growing their voices at Sourcewell's Young Authors Conference, Nov. 14 and 15, 2024, at Central Lakes College – Staples campus.
Students in grades 4-6 were invited to attend this long-running event, which was hosted across two days due to large registration sizes. Eight presenters from around the area shared their experiences as professional authors, covering storytelling topics like dialogue, characters, illustration, songwriting, and more.
Sourcewell’s student academic programs coordinator, Crysta Christensen, said that this event was focused on giving students a chance to develop their own writing skills, style, and voice, by helping them find their strengths as authors and by potentially opening them up to directions they hadn’t considered.
“We want every student to know that their storytelling voice is unique,” Christensen said. “This event is all about encouraging students to tell the stories that matter to them, in their own way. We’ve been so lucky to have keynote speaker Dawn and the other presenters share their expertise across these two days, and the response from our young authors has been spectacular.”
Presenters and topics included:
Dawn Quigley | Keynote Presenter
Dawn Quigley, Ph.D. and citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, ND, is an educator and former Indian Education program director who spent over 18 years teaching English and reading in K-12 schools.
Dawn is an award-winning author of books like “Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-To-Be Best Friend,” “Apple in the Middle,” “Joey Reads the Sky,” “Native American Heroes,” and “Red Bird Danced” (forthcoming). Dawn has over 30 published articles, essays, and poems. Dawn lives in Minnesota with her family, where she loves to read, write, and sometimes cook healthy meals.
Abby Cooper | Writing is Magical
In this introduction to speculative fiction, students will explore many exciting ways to sprinkle magical elements into stories. They will brainstorm ideas for magical characters, settings, and objects, and discuss how to account for magical elements in a way that makes sense to readers. Students will then begin crafting a piece of writing. Come ready to be creative – we’ll have a magical time!
Abby Cooper is the author of four middle-school novels: “Sticks & Stones,” “Bubbles,” “Friend or Fiction,” and “True Colors.” A former school librarian, Abby is the founder of A Book of My Own, a new non-profit that aims to increase book ownership across Minnesota. Visit her online at AbbyCooperAuthor.com.
Art Coulson | Bring Your Characters to Life
What makes a character memorable? This session aims to find out. Together we’ll explore the traits of a great character in a book or story and how we can add detail and depth to the characters we create. You’ll leave with some handy tools to help you get the characters out of your head and onto the page in ways that will make everyone want to know them better.
Art Coulson, the 2023 McKnight Fellow in Children’s Literature, has written more than a dozen books, graphic novels and plays, including “Chasing Bigfoot,” “The Reluctant Storyteller,” and “Look, Grandma! Ni, Elisi!” which was named a best STEM book by the National Science Teaching Association and featured on Reading Rainbow.
Jason Walz | Let’s Make a Comic!
Comics are an exciting way to tell stories, but they can also be very daunting. Whether you’ve been making comics for years or you have never even dreamed of trying it before, you will leave this class feeling like a comic book rock star. You’ll leave this session with new skills and plans for creating comic stories of your own. Join us for an exciting experience full of encouragement, support, and fun.
Jason Walz is the author and illustrator of the graphic novels “Last Pick,” “Last Pick: Born to Run,” “Last Pick: Rise Up,” “A Story for Desmond,” and “Homesick,” which was nominated for an Eisner award. In addition to cartooning, Jason has also been teaching within special education for over twenty years. His latest book is a YA graphic novel for Penguin Books about depression and loss (with lots of monsters thrown in for good measure).
John Coy | Let’s Talk: How Dialogue Can Improve Your Writing
Dialogue can tell a lot about character, plot, and emotion. We’ll write lots and have fun as we discuss the importance of dialogue in creating effective scenes, develop different ways of presenting dialogue, and discover ways to make writing dialogue fun, easy, and effective.
John is the author of young adult novels, chapter books, and nonfiction and fiction picture books. He has received numerous awards for his work and loves working with students to share some of the techniques he’s learned. John lives by the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.
Ken Lonnquist | Voice, Tone, and Rhythm: Make Your Writing Sing!
Whether you write prose or poetry, drama or comedy – or even songs! – you need to tune in to your own voice. In this session, you’ll write a brand new song with Ken while learning about how to identify your own voice and perspective, keep it focused, and choose descriptive words that feel fresh and unique to your voice.
Ken brings laughter and song to audiences of all ages, exploring themes of nature, human nature, and current events. He has toured North America and his songs have played on NPR, Air America, documentaries, and more.
Stacy Ebert | A Pickle is Worth a Thousand Words: Illustrate Expressive Characters with Page-Turning Personality!
Illustration is a game-changer! In this session, you’ll get a glimpse into the world of illustration and learn how to show a character’s feelings and personality using two important techniques: facial expressions and lines of action. We’ll practice using these techniques to make any character – like the pickles from Stacy’s latest book – feel dynamic and full of personality.
Stacy is a children’s book illustrator and writer originally from Brainerd, MN. She works with major NYC publishing houses alongside professionals who have edited and directed books like “Fancy Nancy” and “Pete the Cat.” She loves playing piano and spending time with her family. Learn more at: www.stacyebert.com
Ty Chapman | Writing a Scene with Conflict
How do you write conflict into a story? How can you make it exciting and relatable? In this active session, we’ll jump right into generative writing exercises and get comfortable making big creative choices together. You’ll learn about setting, character building, and writing an effective scene, and how you can use each of those to build conflict and resolution!
Ty Chapman is the author of multiple children’s books and a poetry collection. Ty was a 2024 Cave Canem fellow, 2022 Center for Arts + Social Justice Fellow, and a Mirrors & Windows fellow. He holds an MFA in writing for children and young adults through Vermont College of Fine Arts.