Picture Book Summit | 2015

Peter Brown has written and illustrated many books for children and earned numerous honors, including a Caldecott Honor, a Horn Book Award, two E.B. White Awards, two E.B. White Honors, a Children’s Choice Award for Illustrator of the Year, two Irma Black Honors, a Golden Kite Award, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book Award and six New York Times bestsellers.

His titles include New York Times bestsellers like The Curious Garden, Children Make Terrible Pets, and Mr. Tiger Goes Wild. Peter’s illustrations for Creepy Carrots!, written by Aaron Reynolds, earned him a Caldecott Honor.

Andrea Davis Pinkney is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been awarded multiple Coretta Scott King Book Awards, Jane Addams Children’s Literature Honor citations, four NAACP Image Award nominations, the Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor medal, as well as several Parenting Publication Gold Medals, and American Library Association Notable Book citations.

Her picture books include Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride, Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down, and A Poem for Peter.

Mac Barnett is a New York Times-bestselling author whose books for children have sold more than one million copies in the United States and have been translated into over 30 languages. His picture books include two Caldecott-Honor-winning collaborations with Jon Klassen: Sam & Dave Dig a Hole, which also won the E.B White Read-Aloud Award, and Extra Yarn, which won both the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the E.B. White Read-Aloud Award. Leo: A Ghost Story, illustrated by Christian Robinson, and The Skunk, illustrated by Patrick McDonnell, were named two of the Ten Best Illustrated Books of 2015 by The New York Times.

An award-winning picture book author, 21st century publishing expert and founder of the 12 x 12 Picture Book Writing Challenge. Julie’s picture book credits include My Love For You is the and A Troop is a Group of Monkeys. Visit JulieHedlund.com to discover more.

Katie is Director of the Institute of Children’s Literature and acclaimed writer/illustrator whose credits include 10 books for children, which have sold over 755,000 copies. Her two books for writers, How To Promote Your Children’s Book and How to Write a Children’s Book are both #1 Amazon bestsellers. Learn more about Katie at KatieDavis.com.

Laura is Publisher of Children’s Book Insider, The Children’s Writing Monthly. A former agent and editor, she’s edited & critiqued thousands of picture book manuscripts. Among her vast credits are Best Books for Kids Who (Think They) Hate to Read (Random House), Writer’s Digest and The Writer. Laura blogs at WriteForKids.org.

Emma is a best-selling children’s book author, editor and writing coach. With her mother, actress/author Julie Andrews, Emma has co-authored over thirty children’s books, seven of which have been on the NY Times Bestseller list. Learn more about Emma at: EmmaWaltonHamilton.com.

Adriana Dominguez has nearly 20 years experience in publishing, most recently as Executive Editor at HarperCollins Children's Books, where he managed the children's division of the Latino imprint, Rayo. Prior to that, she was Children's Reviews Editor at Criticas magazine, published by Library Journal. She has performed editorial work for many children's and adult publishers, both on a full time basis and as a freelance consultant, on English and Spanish language books.

Adriana is also a professional translator who has worked on a number of translations of award-winning and best-selling children's books. Adriana joined Full Circle in 2009, and is based on the East Coast. She is interested in children's picture books, middle grade novels, and literary young adult novels.

Stephen Fraser joined The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency as an agent in January 2005. He worked most recently at HarperCollins Children’s Books, where he edited such creative talents as Mary Engelbreit, Gregory Maguire, Michael Hague, Ann Rinaldi, Kathryn Lasky, Brent Hartinger, Stephen Mitchell, and Dan Gutman. He began his career at Highlights for Children and later worked at Scholastic and Simon & Schuster. A graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, he has a Master’s degree in Children’s Literature from Simmons College in Boston. He represents both children’s and adult books in a wide range of genres.

Elizabeth Harding represents authors and illustrators of picture books, middle-grade and young adult fiction. She started at the agency almost 20 years ago as an assistant to the legendary Marilyn E. Marlow. Elizabeth’s list includes New York Times bestsellers, Newbery, National Book Award, Printz, and Coretta Scott King honor and award winners. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), a devoted and hopeful fan of her hometown Cleveland teams and lives in Manhattan with her husband and four sons.

Tricia is the ``Pacific Northwest branch`` of EMLA—born and raised in Oregon, and now lives in Seattle. After 19 years of working as a developmental and production-based editor (from kids books to college textbooks, but mostly college textbooks), she joined the EMLA team in March 2011 as a social media strategist. As agent, Tricia represents picture books/chapter books that look at the world in a unique and unusual way, with characters that are alive both on and off the page, and middle grade and young adult fiction and nonfiction that offers strong worldbuilding, wounded narrators, and stories that grab a reader and won't let go.

Tricia loves hiking, camping out in the woods, and collecting rocks. She loves BBC America and anything British. She has way too many books and not enough bookshelves.

Liz Van Doren has been an editor and publisher of children’s books, a writer, and a teacher for her entire career. She has published many award-winning books for children of all ages, from picture books to teen fiction. Currently she heads the editorial department in the book publishing division of Highlights for Children and teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and at NYU’s McGhee Division.

Liza Baker is VP/Executive Editorial Director of Cartwheel Books and Orchard Books, both imprints of Scholastic. Her focus is on illustrated books for children ages 0-9 and formats ranging from board and novelty books to picture books, leveled readers and early chapter books.
Throughout her 23 year career she has worked with an esteemed list of talent including Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney, Marc Brown, Peter Reynolds, Eric Litwin, James McMullen, and Tom Litchenheld.

Alvina Ling oversees Little, Brown Books for Young Reader’s Middle Grade and Young Adult lists, and is interested in both genre (including science fiction, fantasy, and mystery), nonfiction, and contemporary fiction. She would love to acquire a commercial “next big thing” series, as well as strong literary fiction with award potential. Alvina edits everything from picture books to young adult, with a particular interest in books with multicultural themes. Some of her recent publications include the New York Times bestselling picture books Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown; Caldecott Honor book Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill and Bryan Collier; Newbery Honor book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin; and Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney.

Laura Godwin is vice president and publisher of Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Macmillan LLC where she has been for the past twenty-five years. She is also the editor of many award-winning picture books and novels including, Little Elliot, Big City by Mike Curato; What’s Your Favorite Color? by Eric Carle and Friends; The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jackie Kelly; and Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin.

Jill Davis is the Executive Editor for Katherine Tegen Books at HarperCollins Publishers. She edits delightful, fun, touching books in her job at
Katherine Tegen Books. She writes books for children. She teaches writing; and she helps other writers to make their own stories work.
Her specialties include writing for children of all ages, teaching writing, building relationships with developing writers, developing stories and manuscripts.