It is no longer possible to book onto this event
Join us for the closing night of the Children's & YA Fiction Festival as we celebrate writing books to inspire young minds. For the first part of the evening, we will be joined by Jenny Pearson who will answer that all important question: why do we write for children?
The children's & YA book publishing market will be the focus of our second session. Joined by a group of children's & YA fiction literary agents and commissioning editors, we will discuss the balancing act of creativity and commercial appeal as well as the essential ingredients of great storytelling.
7-7.40pm: Why Write for Children? – Keynote speech with Jenny Pearson
7.45-8.45pm: Creating Brilliant Books – Panel discussion with literary agents and commissioning editors
featuring Millie Lean - junior agent at YMU Books, Hannah Sandford - Editorial Director, Bloomsbury Children's Books and Lydia Silver literary agent at Darley Anderson
Exclusive content
All attendees reserving a place at this event also receive free access to An Introduction to Children's Publishing in 2022, a video interview with Alysoun Owen, Editor of the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook and the Children's Writers' & Artists' Yearbook. A link to the interview will be circulated by email ahead of the festival, and remain available to view for one week.
We are partnering with The Little Bookshop Leeds and attendees will have the opportunity to purchase all festival books directly with them.
Selection of testimonials from our 2021 festival
"I thought the festival was wonderful - so upbeat and positive which is exactly what you want to hear when there's such a strong stigma of 'the chances of you getting published are about as high as you winning the lottery'." Grace Ball
"What a pleasure to hear from professionals in the field. Each of the workshops have given me some valuable 'take away' advice to work with." Lindsey Franklin
"Encouraging, informative, confident-boosting, enjoyable, very helpful." Carrie Steer
"Excellent. Full of insightful and practical information, giving inspiration to get plotting, writing and submitting." Lou Graham
"Professional, inspiring and totally engrossing. So much information packed into such a small time frame." Bedina
"Excellent. Very informative events with practical advice and encouragement." Sarah Giordano
Jenny Pearson is the author of the books The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates, The Incredible Record Smashers and Grandpa Frank's Great Big Bucket List. She has been shortlisted for the Costa, Waterstones, Lollies, UKLA and Branford Boase children's book awards and has been a Times book of the week twice. When she's not writing, she is a primary school teacher in the North East of England. And when she's not teaching she can usually be found wrangling her own children or doing something sporty. She is also a Guiness World Record Holder.
Millie Lean is a Junior Agent at YMU Books.
Millie began her career at Bloomsbury, working on reference books Whitaker’s Almanac and Who’s Who. From there, she pivoted to Children’s publishing. As an Editor in the Puffin team at Penguin Random House UK, she worked across award-winning authors such as Jacqueline Wilson, Manjeet Mann and Naomi Klein.
Millie then joined YMU Books in 2020, where she represents literary clients including bestselling authors Ant and Dec, Fearne Cotton and Matt Lucas, and she is a talent manager for TikTok trainspotter Francis Bourgeois. She specialises in children’s and young adult books.
Millie can be found on Twitter at @lean_millie and on Instagram at @millieleanbooks.
fter a childhood buried in library books and Beanos, Lydia started her career in the editorial team at Egmont, where she commissioned books such as the Carnegie Medal-winning The Poet X. She joined the Darley Anderson team in 2018, and is building an engaging and diverse list of authors and illustrators. With experience on both sides of the commissioning desk, Lydia loves working editorially with her clients and developing ideas from an initial spark into a full manuscript. She represents clients across all age groups, including picture book, chapter book, middle grade and YA, and has a particular focus on non-fiction.
Lydia reads and considers widely, and among other things she is looking for snort-inducing stories for younger readers, clever and contemporary teenage and YA fiction, and non-fiction projects that take big ideas and make them easily navigable, accessible and fun. She would particularly love to see queer characters in middle grade plots, bold and bonkers young readers, and high-concept YA fantasies with truly original worldbuilding. No matter the story, Lydia is drawn to voice above anything else and will always be sucked in by a strong hook.
Lydia represents clients including Soofiya, Gina Blaxill, Mark Bradley, Ryan Hammond, Alice Harman, Joyce Efia Harmer, Catherine Jacob, Hannah Moffatt, Rachel Morrisroe, Nick Sheridan, Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Eva Wong Nava. If you could sum up her tastes in three words, they would be curious, characterful and heartfelt, and in three books, they would be One of Us is Lying, Nevermoor and You Are Awesome.
Hannah is Editorial Director on the children’s fiction team at Bloomsbury. She’s worked in publishing for 12 years, beginning her career at Egmont and moving to Bloomsbury in 2016. In that time she’s commissioned books across the spectrum of fiction for 5+ to teen readers – from young, funny, brilliantly silly colour fiction to heart-breaking, heart-mending literary YA prize-winners. Working with authors is her favourite bit of the job
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All workshops are available to purchase separately but come as part of our Children's & YA Fiction Festival 2022.
The event of £10 (inc. VAT) is payable in full online.
This is a live online event which will be presented using video conferencing software. Joining instructions and full guidance will be provided by the W&A Team a week before the event start-date.
Event materials will be made available to attendees for a time-limited period after the event at the author's discretion.
Please note that payment instalment plans are available for all W&A events, writing courses and editing services. Contact W&A Admin on writersandartists@bloomsbury.com so that we can find a payment schedule that works for you.
If you would like to book three workshops, you can do this at a special combined price of £70. W&A Admin will contact all customers booking at this special price w/c 14th February 2022 to confirm their workshop choices.
Accessible to All
It’s of real importance to Writers & Artists that our events and courses remain accessible to all.
- Writers & Artists has made up to five bursary places available for this event as part of our accessibility scheme. Please visit our bursaries page for further information about how to apply. All bursary applications must have been submitted for consideration by 7th February 2022
- At the author’s discretion, event materials will be made available to attendees after the masterclass.
- A link to a recording of the masterclass will be circulated after the event. This will be made available to event attendees only, and for a time-limited period.
- This event will include written text and visuals. Please contact us in advance so that we can make arrangements to be sure all documents appear in a format that works for you.
- If you’d like to attend but have any questions or concerns regarding accessibility, then please email AccessWA@bloomsbury.com
