2025 November Conference

Our November 8, 2025 CWHV conference was held at the Hampton Inn & Suites at 2361 South Road, Poughkeepsie, NY.

This was a full day conference with a Panera lunch, and paid critiques (optional) from our faculty.

We started our day with our humorous keynote speaker, Alan Katz, children's author and a six-time Emmy nominated writer for TV series. He was a delight and everyone enjoyed him.

Erika DiPasquale, Editor at Harper Children's Books explored what makes an anthropomorphized animal or object a strong children's book character and through guided discussions, nature connection activities and play.

Catherine Laudone, senior editor at Beach Lane Book, discussed the five tools for crafting strong characters: Unique character motivation, Overcoming obstacles, Emotional highs and lows, Positive and negative relationships with secondary characters, and Evidence of change in the resolution.

Catherine also did an off-the-cuff first page session.

Kelly Going, award winning children's author, did manuscript critiques throughout the day.

Thanks to all of our presenters, our faculty and our committee staff. We couldn't do it without you. 

2024 June Conference

Our June 8, 2024 CWHV Conference was a wonderful success. Our keynote speaker was Susanna Leonard Hill who delivered an inspiring speech on persistence. She also enlightened us on where she got her ideas, how to find new ideas and how to dig into your own past, feelings and fears for emotional truth.

Alexandra Penfold, an agent at Upstart Crow Literary, explained in detail the picture book editing process and what questions one should ask when editing, and how to develop an emotional connection between the reader and the character. She also shared mentor texts with their illustrations. Attendees worked on their pitch as their hands-on exercise.

Mekisa Telfer, an editor at Roaring Brook Press, discussed the voice of your characters and how voice can set the mood, used multiply published works to demonstrate how voice can define your characters and setting, and reviewed the different stylistic tools of writing. The hands-on writing exercises focused on the voice of your characters in your novel.

Alison Weiss, an independent consultant, talked about the lows and highs of publishing, the disappointments and the joys. She discussed marketing ideas and strategy, how publishers get their sales numbers, explained the profit and loss process and what to do if your publisher closes or your editor leaves.

Everyone enjoyed a delicious Panera lunch while chatting with fellow writers or the faculty.

Our closing session was a Q & A Panel with Alexandra and Mekisha.

Many thanks to our hard working attendees, without you our conference wouldn’t exist. Also, a big thank you to our faculty Susanna Leonard Hill, Alexandra Penfold, Mekisha Telfer and Alison Weiss.

A final thank you goes to our dedicated staff Catherine Ciocchi, Della Ferreri, Tania Guarino, Valerie Marchini and Karen Orloff.

"Thank you for all your efforts in putting on another great workshop. I learned so much and made wonderful contacts and new friendships. The CWHV events have been informative and inspiring." Mark Rentz, June 2024, conference attendee

 

Mekisha Telfer

Susanna Leonard Hill

Alexandra Penfold

Alison Weiss

                                                

2023 November First Pages Conference

We were thrilled to have Sean McCarthy, agent and owner of the Sean McCarthy Literary Agency: Meredith Mundy, Editorial Director of Abrams Appleseed and the Abrams Preschool Program; and Beth Terrill, Editor, NorthSouth Books give their professional advice on our CWHV First Pages Conference.

Comments ranged from nice alliteration, liked the use of onomatopoeia, too many shifts in perspective, voice feels didactic and many comments on rhyme and character. There were also comments about conflict, narrative action, transitions, wrong format for age and /or subject and 100 more opinions.

We broke for a delicious Panera lunch.

After the First Pages were concluded, Sean ran a workshop on pacing. Below are the topics: Pacing, Meet the Characters, Anticipation and Escalation of Conflict, Character Driven Action, Crisis and Resolution, Lasting Memory and Transformation. Sean discussed all of these in more detail.

We closed out the afternoon with a Faculty Q &A with Sean, Meredith, and Beth.

We want to thank our attendees for their continued support of the Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley and for our faculty, Sean McCarthy, Meredith Mundy, and Beth Terrill for spending the day teaching us how to make our first page stronger, clearer and more inviting. Last but no least, we want to thank our hard working committee members for another successful conference.

For photos, click conference pics and scroll down to November 2023.

 

2023 June Self-Edit and Query Workshops

The Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley was delighted to have Sara Schonfeld, Associate Editor at HarperCollins Children’s Publishing, lead a workshop on self-editing like an editor and how to strengthen your query letter. Sara was warm, friendly, approachable, and knowledgeable. Below is a brief summary of our workshops.

Some of Sara’s tips for self-editing was a reverse outline, write down what happened in the story and what is it doing for the story. When editing ask yourself questions, does each scene advance the character or plot?

Think about your main character: what are the themes, relationships, growth, motivation.

After Sara’s PowerPoint presentation, our writing exercise was to edit several pages of our manuscript focusing on specific areas.

Tips for strengthening your query included what to look for when researching your comp titles, how to find examples of comp titles, answering the five basic questions (what, when, who, how and why) and following the four basic structural parts of a query letter. 

Sara reviewed proper query protocols when submitting multiple query letters to editors or agents.

Some common mistakes in writing query letters were too much world building, too much information, too long and others.

Our writing exercise was to rewrite our query letter. Sara read many query letters to the group and gave constructive feedback. Even if your query wasn't read, listening to Sara's comments were still valuable.

We want to thank Sara for spending the afternoon with us and teaching us about self-editing and making our queries stronger. Also, we want to thank our hard working attendees and the CWHV staff.

2022 November Fall Conference

Our November 2022 Fall Conference was a wonderful success. It was a pleasure to see so many familiar faces, and our faculty was welcoming, knowledgeable and their presentations, excellent. We had Frances Gilbert, VP and Editor-in-Chief of Doubleday Books for Young Readers; Rachel Orr, agent at Prospect Agency; and Talia Benamy, editor at Philomel Books.

We opened our conference with fellowship over coffee, cookies and muffins.

Our Keynote was Frances Gilbert. She talked about the rules of writing. The tip is there are no rules in writing. She showed a slide of 9 picture books, four of them were medal winners, and all of those writers did not follow the rules. She talked about some of her editorial preoccupations, including word counts, plot, stories being too formulaic, main character growth or no growth, plus others.

Rachel Orr talked about strong beginnings that will hook the reader, the different categories of beginnings, what makes a bad beginning, and what is the purpose of picture book beginnings. She talked about nontraditional structures and the three categories of endings. Working on our own manuscripts, we used some of the techniques that we learned to improve our beginnings and endings.

Talia Benamy’s workshop was on crafting compelling characters. We reviewed what makes characters seem real, three dimensional and someone you’d like to spend time with. We examined ways to make characters come alive, what are their wants, what do they think they want, mannerisms, habits, etc. Our exercises encouraged us to delve deep into our characters to flush them out.

Our final session was a panel with Frances, Rachel, and Talia. Some questions asked were about the submission process; multiple authors on the same story and how royalties are split; if a client and agent part ways, what happens to future royalties and commissions; how did the editors and agent feel about self-published works; and what happens if an editor leaves in the middle of an acquisitions?

The faculty and attendees enjoyed a Panera’s lunch. Thank you Panera for providing our lunches. We want to thank our faculty, staff, and our dedicated and hardworking attendees, without your support, we wouldn’t exist. 

Frances Gilbert

Talia Benamy

                                            

Rachel Orr

2022 JUNE CRAFTING A HOOK WORKSHOP

We were thrilled to have Elizabeth Law, Senior Editor and Backlist Specialist at Holiday House run a workshop at our June 2022 CWHV Event on writing your manuscript’s hook. She was humorous, knowledgeable, approachable and a real delight.

Crafting a compelling hook is essential in getting an agent’s or editor’s attention. If your hook doesn’t grab or appeal to them, they will stop reading. When writing your hook, try to put the key words in your title or in the first 25 words of description. Always highlight the conflict or tension.

Several examples of hooks were discussed, along with several formulas for crafting your hook.

1. Book A meets Book B (for example: Mean Girls Meet Parent Trap)

2. My book, (title) has the sexual tension like Twilight but with pirates instead of vampires. (State what is similar and what is different.)

Our hands-on-exercise was working on our hooks, sharing them (optional) and then getting Elizabeth’s feedback.

If you’ve received letters from agents or editors with nice compliments like great writing, great characters, etc., but no acceptance offers, it could mean there was no hook and therefore they didn’t know how to sell it or there was no emotional arc.

Tips on researching, finding comp titles and finding examples of hooks were discussed.

Thank you Elizabeth for a wonderful and fun afternoon! You can find Elizabeth on Twitter @elawreads

2021 November Fall Event

Our debut in-person CWHV conference, since Covid, was a delightful success! We met at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Poughkeepsie on November 6, 2021.

We began with registration and fellowship. This was the first time, since our last CWHV conference in June 2019, that many conference attendees met face to face. Attendees chatted, shared coffee and cookies and genuinely enjoyed seeing old writer friends.

Our opening speaker was Alison Weiss, acquisitions editor at Pixel+Ink. In 2016, she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree. She was friendly, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and well prepared! Besides lecture and discussions, there were writing exercises and a three-page handout.

Alison discussed different approaches to planning and building a series across diverse age levels and genres. We discussed the different kinds of series, and ways to develop your character. We worked on our pitches and brainstormed book ideas for series potential. You can follow her on twitter @alioop7 and learn more about Pixel+Ink at pixelandinkbooks.com 

Our second presenter was K. L. Going, an award-winning author. Her first novel, FAT KID RULES THE WORLD was named a Michael Printz Honor Book, and was included on YALSA’s Best Books for Young Adults and on their list of Best Books for the Past Decade. Kelly has participated in prior conferences and is always a joy to listen to.

Kelly talked about different strategies to explore the creative process. Her exercises were unique with multiple stations, one table dealt with taste, texture, smell. Another table offered multiple cards with varying characters, settings and situations.

There was a table with enlarged black and white photographs that inspired me to write a backstory. Other tables offered prompt cards and postcards to stroke one’s creative juices.

To visit Kelly on-line go to klgoing.com, facebook, twitter at @klgoing, instagram @klgoing 

    
Critiques were offered on site by Alison Weiss, K.L. Going and Jalen Garcia-Hall (editorial assistant with Scholastic, Inc.)

We want to thank our presenters and our industrious attendees for supporting us and making our return to hosting conferences an informative and fun afternoon!

For announcements and conference updates, please visit our CWHV facebook page.    

Alison Weiss

K.L. Going