11th Annual Children’s Book Discovery Evening

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

PEN’s mission to support aspiring writers was exemplified in May at the 11th Annual Children’s Book Discovery Evening and Susan P. Bloom Award presentation.

While introducing the honorees, members of the Children’s Book Committee reflected on some of the best parts of judging the 2009 entries for the awards: the camaraderie of coming together to assess a mountain of manuscripts and the satisfaction of discovering unpublished authors and passing their work on to publishers.

But the night belonged to the four winners who read from their work: Maria Gianferrari for her nonfiction picture book, Terrific Tongues; Anna Staniszewski for her middle grade novel, The Tinkerers; J. James Keels for his YA novel, Starving Hysterical Naked; and Shelagh Smith for her YA novel, A Mouthful of Straw.

As always, each winner’s manuscript will be submitted to a publisher. Our thanks this year to Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Candlewick Press, and Knopf Books for Young Readers.

Susan P. Bloom Award, by Lois Lowry

2009 Susan P. Bloom Award Certificate, by Lois Lowry