The Nikki Grimes Scholarship for
From Storyteller to Exquisite Writer:
The Pleasures and Craft of Poetic Techniques
is now closed until 2015.

Please check back or join our tribe for first notice here.

Check back here in 2015 when we run the course again, or to get some lovely email reminders about our courses please join our Tribe to subscribe to our Newsletter :)

The Children's Book Academy is proud and excited to offer merit scholarships for writers and illustrators of color, identifying as LBGQTI, or having a disability, who are currently underrepresented in the children's publishing industry. In addition, we are offering scholarships for low income folks who might not be able to take this course otherwise as well as to SCBWI Regional Advisers and Illustrator Coordinators who do so much unpaid work to help our field. While our primary goal is to help support increased diversity in the field and help improve cultural representation to reflect the true make-up of the United States, we also want to help as many people as possible take our cutting edge courses! 

For these reasons, we are offering at least five full scholarships to the interactive online From Storyteller to Exquisite Writer: The Pleasures and Craft of Poetic Techniques e-Course and 5 half-off scholarships. If you'd like to help our initiative for social justice, please share the link to this page: http://www.childrensbookacademy.com/nikki-grimes-scholarship-information.html

Don't let the words poetic or poetry fool you, even though you will be learning how to rhyme, the course is about so much more, in particular how to be an exquisite writer using luscious, lyrical, soulful, or funny language to write great books. Along with way too many goodies to describe, we'll have weekly live critiquing webinars as we walk you through writing or re-writing your story for publication. 

Easy Peasy Scholarship Criteria
Applicants need to:

• Be a member of an ethnic minority, or identify as LGBQTI, or as having a disability, be low income, or be an SCBWI RA.
  
• Be committed to and excited about writing poetry or truly exquisite texts for children's books and want to contribute to the field to help make a better world through children's books, whether it's just by creating more delight or by skillfully and subtly integrating social justice themes in your work.
• Commit to participating fully in the course.
  
• All applicants must write a 40-60 word description of themselves, their background, and why they'd like this scholarship.
  
• Writers must compose a 30-word descriptive pitch for a 600-word or less picture book that they will work on during the course.
  
• If you have a website, please include it.
• Applicants must complete the short submission form here by midnight on Friday, May 2nd.
  

To find out more about this extraordinary course, click here. 

And just to give you a clue as to what an award winning entry looks like, here's Debbie Taylor's self-description.

"I’m a female African-American writer on a precipice. I’m a word lover for whom writing is a deep, sweet calling. Though I’ve written magazine stories and several books, I must commit to mastering poetic techniques to craft better non-fiction work. While I have the basic tools for this quest, these tools require sharpening and my strategies need refinement. I’ll be a contributing member of this thriving community of writers striving to infuse their work with clarity and emotion. The course will provide the structure to harness the pulse offered by rhyme, rhythm and metaphor to create memorable books." Hard to resist hey! And FYI, Debbie's experience of having published already was not an influencer, but her passion, imagination, and willingness to take risks certainly was.

About the Nikki Grimes Merit Scholarship

Nikki Grimes has won many awards for  her writing and poetry including the NCTE Award for Poetry, the Corretta Scott King Award for Bronx Masquerade; the Coretta Scott King Author Honor for Jazmin's Notebook, Talkin' About Bessie, Dark Sons, The Road to Paris, and  Words with Wings; Horn Book Fanfare for Talkin' About Bessie; ALA Notable books such as What is Goodbye? and Words with Wings. She is also the author of the popular Dyamonde Daniel chapter book series, as well as numerous picture books such as Voices of Christmas and the recent New York Times bestseller Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope. She is also the recipient of the Golden Dolphin Award by the Southern California Children's Book Association recognizing her entire body of work.

Nikki has conducted in-person readings and lectures  throughout the United States and in many other countries including Russia, China, Sweden, Tanzania and Haiti! Her credits are too numerous to recount. Nikki has not only graciously consented to be our honoree for this award but will also be contributing an interview to the course From Storyteller to Exquisite Writer: The Pleasures and Craft of Writing Poetic Techniques, a course for all children's book writers wanting to improve their craft.

Here are some of Nikki's books that we hope that you will purchase through our Independent booksellers affiliates link to help support our scholarships.

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A Little About Racial Diversity in Children's Literature.

While we offer scholarships to all individuals who identify as being in the groups mentioned above, the statistics on racial representation in children's books are incredibly disheartening. And while some folks (i.e. Anglo people) genuinely believe that we've moved beyond this into a color-blind society, the reality of this is simply not true.

Here are some links that I hope that you'll explore. 
Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing by Daniel Jose Older on Buzzfeed

Lee and Low Curriculum Corner: Race
An article with 8 links to article on the subject.

Literary Agents Discuss the Diversity Gap in Publishing by Jason Low on Lee and Low
An article that I'm in about agents and diversity put together by the fabulous Jason Low.

As Demographics Shift, Kids' Books Stay Stubbornly White by Elizabeth Blair on NPR's Code Switch Blog

Artist Illustrates Dramatic Lack of Diversity in Kid's Books by Jason Boog on GalleyCat

Race, Gender, and Disability in Today's Children's Literature by Kira Isak Pirofski on Critical Multicultural Pavilion 

Children's Literature Stuck in the Past: Why Is There Still a Lack of Diversity In Books for Kids? on AirTalk from KPCC

Polka Dots, Self-Portraits, and First Voice Multicultural Children's Books by Maya Gonzales on The Children's Book Academy

There are so many blog posts out there about this issue. I recently met with some editors in NY and learned something super interesting. There are two main reasons that publishers are not publishing the kinds of books that we all need to truly help get to a color blind society and that is not enough people buy diverse children's books and that many people of color who have not had the kinds of educational opportunities that middle class folks have had with 2 generations or more of university graduates behind them don't always have the skills needed. Hence these scholarships and a request to help support diversity by buying diverse books. :)  Here's a wee graphic from Lee and Low.

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