Dear Ones, We’re happy to help announce and promote BREAK OUT: a movement to (re)integrate incarcerated writers into literary community, an effort from The Poetry Project and the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program. Throughout the month of September, over two dozen local reading series in New York City—and across the country—will feature the […]
This November’s Madeleine L’Engle event — the inaugural Walking on Water Conference — won’t merely a retrospective and celebration of Madeleine. Instead, organizers have a vision that the conference would also look ahead, amplifying and empowering artists and writers for a new generation. Enter We Need Diverse Books, a grassroots nonprofit of children’s book lovers who […]
By Molly Cantrell-Kraig I blame Charlton Heston. When I was a little kid, the yearly screening of “The Ten Commandments” was anticipated in our household for a number of reasons. The first of which was its role as a rite of passage to, if not adulthood, at least big kid status, proved through the ability […]
Madeleine said that artists, like children, are good believers. She also denied that writing for children was any different from writing for grownups (a perspective that came up recently during Children’s Book Week). The techniques of fiction are the techniques of fiction. They hold as true for Beatrix Potter as they do for Fyodor Dostoyevsky. […]
When I saw A Wrinkle in Time on stage this spring, I was blown away by the ability of the performers and director to keep the truth of the story while staying true to their medium. I constantly wondered, though: How on earth did they adapt this book so well? We’re thrilled to have a […]
By Judith Lindbergh “Are you sure you want to know the future?” Madeleine asked in all seriousness and waited for my response. She sat up in her four-poster bed, draped in luxuriant covers, and I sat at the edge. She was remarkably generous, inviting so many of her students into her home, nurturing and guiding […]
Dear Ones, Katherine Paterson and Audrey Assad! Are! Coming! And — you’re invited! I needed to shout that news across the internet. This fall’s first Madeleine L’Engle “Walking on Water” Conference will feature these two creative minds in big ways. (!!) First, let’s talk music: Award-winning singer-songwriter Audrey Assad will be Musician-in-Residence at the conference! […]
By RuthAnn Deveney Recently, I read Anne Bogel‘s upcoming release, I’d Rather Be Reading, which is a lovely collection of bookish essays. In the piece entitled, “A Reader’s Coming of Age,” Anne talks about the transition in her early twenties, when she had to go from having books chosen for her to needing to choose her own […]
“This question of the meaning of being, and dying and being, is behind the telling of stories around tribal fires at night; behind the drawing of animals on the walls of caves; the singing of melodies of love in spring, and of the death of green in autumn. It is part of the deepest longing […]