Local author Dianne Young will be offering writers a chance to learn from someone who has experienced the path to having a picture book published. An online workshop will be available on Tuesday, June 9th from 6:30pm – 8:30pm via Zoom. This will be available to writers at any stage of their career.
Participants will be provided with an opportunity to submit questions for Young to answer when registering. Registration will be limited to ten individuals, and Wheatland Regional Library residents will be given priority. Those interested are advised to register early be emailing ProgramManager@wheatland.sk.ca or visit https://www.wheatland.sk.ca/dyoung. The deadline for registration is June 4, 2020.
In this workshop, Young will discuss standard formats, plot and dialogue, relatable characters, use of rhyme, illustration and more. She will also discuss how important it is to read picture books if you want to write them. This lesson will help those interested to be able to share good storytelling with a limited number of words.
Young, who has been writing since 1986 has published five picture books, which include four fiction and one non-fiction, and an early chapter book. The book Dear Flyary, illustrated by John Martz, won a 2014 Saskatchewan Book Award.
In 2018, Young published Grampa, Will You Tell Me a Story?, with the creator of the Pickles comic strip Brian Crane.
Young has also published an anthology of letters written by widows to their newly-widowed self and is working on another book with letters from women who have experienced the death of a child.
Her current work-in-progress is an account of the 60 new things she did in the last year as a celebration of turning sixty. She also photographs birds and maintains a bird list, and butterfly and moth list, on her website “Young at Heart.”
