New Voices/New Visions Award

New Voices Award FAQs

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Note: The New Voices and New Visions writing contests are currently on a temporary hiatus. A follow-up announcement will come in 2024.

The New Voices Award is open to all authors of color and Native nations who have not previously had a children’s picture book published. The winner receives a cash prize of $2000 and our standard publication contract, including our basic advance and royalties for a first-time author. An Honor winner will receive a cash prize of $1000.

We periodically get some questions about the Award, so I’d like to answer a few of them if I can:

What does it mean to be a person of color?

Well, that can be a pretty complicated question, but for purposes of our New Voices Award specifically, we accept contest entries from people who self-identify as African, Asian/Pacific Islander, Latinx, Middle Eastern, or Native American/Indigenous descent.

Why is the New Voices Award only open to people of color?

The New Voices Award was founded to encourage and support authors of color in a market where they’ve been traditionally excluded and underrepresented. That was true in 2000 when the award was started and it’s still true today (see these stats for some surprising figures about the number of books published by/for people of color). The New Voices Award is one of the ways in which we’re trying to close the gap.

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General

How to Plan a Successful Book Signing – Part 2

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guest bloggerWe’ve been asking our authors and illustrators for their tips for book signings – last week we heard from Lulu Delacre, Joseph Bruchac, and Lee Bennett Hopkins. More helpful advice below from those with considerable experience on the road for those who are just getting started.

Tony Medina
Tony Medina in action at ALA

Authors and illustrators are required to wear many hats if they want to be successful in the book business. Not only must they be the driving force behind the creation of their book, they also have to act as the book’s biggest cheerleader. Some may not be comfortable donning the marketing/publicity hat, but skills in this area can be developed over time. One question you should ask yourself is: Who else knows my book better than me? After all, your book is a project that has taken you months, even years sometimes, so isn’t it worth the effort to sing its praises from the highest rooftops?

What follows is a collection of tips from some of our authors and illustrators on how to make an impression when talking about your book during a signing, spreading enthusiasm, and selling books.

Open Invitation: If you are an author or illustrator and would like to contribute your own tips, please leave a comment below. Everyone benefits from passing the hat and sharing.

Tony Medina (author, I and I Bob Marley, Love to Langston, DeShawn Days, Christmas Makes Me Think): My advice for authors or illustrators just starting out is multi-layered. The first thing I advise is that you know your book through and through. This basically means that you can explain it in one sentence to a person at a book signing, a reading, a conference, or, as I have done, in a bookstore where you just happen to be shopping and notice someone looking at your book. The idea is not to come across like a used car salesman, but as someone who understands children’s literature and what teachers, librarians, and parents look for. In this way you can assess the child’s age range and if your book would be perfect for that particular child. I have gone as far as reading a poem or two from my book, which sells it right off the bat—not to mention the fact that the actual writer is there to sign the book in person. I have also allowed people to mail me a book to sign. This is a great incentive.

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Guest Blogger Post

How to Plan a Successful Book Signing – Part 1

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guest bloggerWhile attending ALA in June I observed the different styles that authors and illustrators employ when meeting the public. Creative folks’ personalities run the gamut from wildly outgoing to quiet and shy. I thought it would be helpful to share the opinions and strategies of those who have had considerable experience on the road with those who are just getting started.

Lulu Delacre
Lulu Delacre at ALA

Authors and illustrators are required to wear many hats if they want to be successful in the book business. Not only must they be the driving force behind the creation of their book, they also have to act as the book’s biggest cheerleader. Some may not be comfortable donning the marketing/publicity hat, but skills in this area can be developed over time. One question you should ask yourself is: Who else knows my book better than me? After all, your book is a project that has taken you months, even years sometimes, so isn’t it worth the effort to sing its praises from the highest rooftops?

What follows is a collection of tips from some of our authors and illustrators on how to make an impression when talking about your book during a signing, spreading enthusiasm, and selling books.

Open Invitation: If you are an author or illustrator and would like to contribute your own tips, please leave a comment below. Everyone benefits from passing the hat and sharing.

Continue reading →

Book News

Beginner’s Books Bound for Popularity

LEE & LOW BOOKS is an independent, family owned company that brings diversity to the pages of its children’s books , middle grade novels and young adult novels.  Our goal is to meet the need for stories that children of color can identify with and that all children can enjoy..  One of the extensions of Lee & Low Books is our imprint BEBOP BOOKS.  These books help bring stories to children who are just beginning their reading experience.  They are child-centered stories that provide beginner reader content for guided reading and intervention settings.  Bebop authors and illustrators  are of diverse backgrounds, resulting in books with appealing text and pictures that children will enjoy and learn from.

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Diversity, Race, and Representation

This Week in Diversity: Appearance

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Greetings on another Friday afternoon!

The New Cover
The Original Cover

Steph Su Reads starts us out with Why I Want More Asians on YA Book Covers: My Experience with Racism, in which she shares a personal experience with racism and her dismay over the revised cover of Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix.

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Diversity, Race, and Representation

This Week in Diversity: Changing and Expanding Communities

Some interesting essays round the blogosphere this week touching on all kinds of diversity—race and more!

Cynic’s blogging for Ta-Nehisi Coates, and he has a really interesting look at the progression of ethnic groups through his neighborhood: first the Irish, then the Jews, now the African Americans. Each group starts as outsiders, whom the insiders swear never to accept, so they create their own institutions and maintain their culture but eventually assimilate, spread out and leave the enclave available for the next group of outsiders—and with the vibrant African American community there now, he wonders, what comes next for them?

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