The Children's Book Writing Master Class provides students deeply immersed in the writing of a children's book with the opportunity to work with a published author and other dedicated writers in a small class setting. (This class is not for picture books — only chapter books, middle grade, and young adult.) The class is devoted almost exclusively to workshopping — the reading, critiquing, and discussion of student work. Every student will be allowed to workshop approximately 150 pages of a book. Class size is limited to six students, all of whom have done a substantial amount of work on a childrens book and are experienced in the workshop process.
Instructor: Nancy Antle is the author of numerous children's books, including the young adult novels Lost in the War (Dial) and Playing Solitaire (Dial); the middle grade novel Beautiful Land (Viking); the easy readers Sam’s Wild West Show (Dial) and The Good Bad Cat (School Zone); and the picture books Staying Cool (Dial) and Ordinary Albert (HarperCollins/Australia). She has also published short stories and poems in Cricket, Children's Playmate, and Blast Off. She has taught with the Institute of Children's Literature. Nancy holds a BA from San Jose State University.
Prerequisites: The following are prerequisites for students who take the Children's Book Writing Master Class:
- A complete (or nearly complete) draft of a children's book
- Completion of one or more terms of Gotham’s Children's Book Writing II course
- Acceptance by Gotham based on a sample of the student’s work
To be accepted into the Children's Book Writing Master Class all students must first submit a sample of their work.
Your writing sample may be no more than ten pages. Ideally, the sample will be the first ten pages of the book you plan to workshop in the Children's Book Writing Master Class. If that material is not yet available, you may submit ten pages from something else you've written for children.
A Note on the Class: All students in this class will be expected to read and critique segments of one hundred pages or more per week. The success of the class depends on the full participation of all students. Students should only take this course if they are confident they can handle the weekly load of reading and critiquing. To make this more manageable, students should have already done most or all of the work on the book that they plan to present to the class before class begins.
A Note to Applicants: The Master Classes may get far more applicants than can be accepted, and so talented and dedicated students are often not accepted. If you are not accepted in a Master Class, you are welcome to apply another time, and you may well be accepted then.
