13 Contests & Workshops

Giveaways

We gather all the young adult releases for the coming week on Fridays and posts the Goodreads synopsis for them along. Along with this we do a giveaway of at least one book.

Workshops

Our monthly 1st Five Pages Workshops begin the first Saturday of every month. We accept the first five middle grade or young adult manuscripts received by email starting at noon. Lisa Gail Green and I will work alongside a guest mentor all month to tell you what we see in those first five pages with respect to your voice, plot, characters, setting, pacing and writing in general. If appropriate, we'll try to help you pull your hook forward and strengthen your voice and structure. You'll also get feedback and comments from your peers throughout the month, and have the opportunity to post revisions each week so you'll end up the strongest possible start.

Here's our upcoming mentor schedule for the rest of the year:

May: Kat Zhang
June: Elana Johnson
July: Sarah Ockler
August: Leah Cypess
September: Nancy Holder
October: PJ Hoover
November: AC Gaughen
December: J. Anderson Coats
The rules are simple:

1. Manuscripts must be middle grade or young adult.
2. Manuscripts do not need to be completed, but must be your own, original work.
3. Send us the first five pages, with each page approximately 250 words, max 1250 words.
4. Do NOT send any synopsis or summary information.
5. Do include your name and genre at the top.
   Author: XXX
   Genre:  XXX
   Title:   (Optional)
6. Send the entry in RTF format IN THE BODY OF THE EMAIL, single spaced, with a blank line between paragraphs. No attachments.
7. Be prepared to receive honest, constructive feedback each week.
8. Be prepared to provide honest, constructive feedback to each of your fellow workshop participants in a kind and courteous manner each week.
9. Send the revised version of the manuscript back to us--following all the above rules--by midnight on Sunday nights until the end of the workshop.

That's it. Simple, right?

Send your emails at noon (Eastern Time) the first Saturday of the month to kidlit at writeedge dot com.

Happy reading and writing,

Martina