I'll be teaching two on-line sessions with Writing for Children Live this month. One, on "The Basics of Writing Successful Picture Books" will be on Wednesday, September 19th, at 7 p.m. EDT. The second will be a webinar entitled "Point of View and Psychic Distance in Fiction for Young People." That will be presented on the next Wednesday, September 26th, 7 p.m. EDT. You can sign up, no charge, for either interactive session. These two sessions will launch a new on-line teaching venture, Writing for Children Live, hosted by Kim Taylor-DiLeva.

I haven't done an on-line lecture before, but this seemed a perfect opportunity to try out this new medium. It's a chance for me to show up, lay out some of what I know, and slip back into my own world and my own writing. The way it works for the participants is that they can sign up to be part of the free live session and then continue to access the session for twenty-four hours afterward for no charge. After the twenty-four hour period, the internet lecture and the webinar will continue to be available but for a fee. (That's the way Kim and I will earn something for our efforts.)

It's going to feel strange, lecturing into a telephone, but this is a brave new world for all of us. I'll set the lectures up so I can pause to get questions and responses from my audience after each section of the talk. That way I hope it won't feel so much like addressing a vacuum. And since I'm going back to topics I've explored many times when I was teaching at VCFA and at writing workshops across the country, it will be interesting to make them fresh for myself and for those who are listening in. 

I hope you'll join me!