fiction

KidLitGN is hosting its 6th, annual pitch event on its website: kidlitgn.com. Agented and unagented graphic novel creators can load pitches October 3-7, with editors, agents, and publishers being invited to view pitches beginning October 7 through October 31.

Unagented and agented GN creators have their own sections and can pitch in the following categories: comics-style picture books, early/chapter, middle grade, and young adult. If you’re an illustrator and don’t have a project to pitch, you can post a portfolio sample in the unagented or agented illustrator sections.

Something new this year: after the pitch event is over, KidLitGN will archive the pitches behind password protected pages. Agents, editors & publishers can request a password and view the pitches throughout the year. Anyone who pitches can request to have their pitch removed at any time.

And the change I’m most excited about: writers-only can upload up to 4 pages of their script along with a bio attached as an art file. And, they can use their pitches to seek out collaborators. See here for more details: https://kidlitgn.com/blog/

Some of you may know that I’ve been involved with KidLitGN since its beginning, and this year was likely going to be our volunteer team’s last year of being able to pull it off. The costs were mounting, and each member of the team was finding successes that were pulling us in other directions.

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In a recent article for SLJ, Henry Herz asked “Why Anthologies?” Great question that I can now answer, having embarked on an adventure with 33 other graphic novel creators to produce a middle grade, crowdfunded graphic novel.

Why did I sign up to be part of this? Well, I’m part of Kids Comics Studio, a membership program of Kids Comics Unite (KCU). When Janna Morishima, a literary agent and owner of KCU, proposed the idea, my first thought was “how are we going to pull this off?” Followed by, “I’ve got to see how this works.”

So, I signed up and it has been a wild ride. Or should I say wild “journey.” That, after all, is the unifying theme for our anthology.

Aside from my curiosity about how it would all work, I was excited to learn how to crowdfund, and even more excited to work with an illustrator. I’m an author-only, and alas, lack the skills to draw the images I see in my own head, so I was very excited to work with an artist. Watching an artist translate my words into their own visual version has been so fun and amazing, which I’ll be writing more about soon.

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