SCBWI Peeps

The best part of conferences and book events is seeing your old SCBWI peeps and meeting new ones!

In this photo: Austin illustrator Mark Mitchell, check out his awesome online color class.  Author Peni Griffin, a homegrown SA talent whose titles include the The Switching Well and 11,000 Years Lost.  Illustrator Layne Johnson, went all founding fathers on us for TLA to celebrate his latest book The Declaration of Independence from A to Z.  And hardworking RA from Brazos Valley, Liz Mertz.

In this photo: Janet Fox, her upcoming book is Faithful.  Another Austin member, Virian Johnson has a new YA book, Saving Maddie and dear Kelly Bennet, who has 15 books published.  (Kelly helped organize the first Texas SCBWI Writer & Illustrators cruise!  We should do another one!!!)

And look, how lucky!  We were right across from the Bloomsbury booth and enjoyed visiting with illustrator and author, Ruth McNally Barshaw.  She was busy signing her latest Ellie McDoodle book and sketching away at the conference.  Ruth is an SCBWI member from Michigan and has done some wonderful sketch-blogging of the national SCBWI conferences over the years.

The SCBWI is all about it's volunteers.  Without them we wouldn't be the thriving, resourceful and encouraging organization that we are!  My deepest heartfelt thanks goes to Catherine Stier, our coordinator for the TLA booth.  What a hard worker and an amazing talent. Next year TLA will be in Austin.  Deborah Gonzales, the new Austin RA,  and Carmen Oliver, her Assistant RA helped us set up our booth earlier this week, pictured here with Catherine.