Founders Workshop

Whole Novel Workshop: Middle Grade

Founded in 2006, the Whole Novel Workshop is specifically designed for writers of middle-grade novels. This unique program offers the one-on-one attention found in degree programs, but without additional academic requirements, lengthy time commitments, or prohibitive financial investments. Our aim is to focus on a specific work in progress, moving a novel to the next level in preparation for submission to agents or publishers. Focused attention in an intimate setting makes this mentorship program one that guarantees significant progress. Our novel mentorship program includes:

  • Focused, one-on-one response to your entire novel-in-progress from an accomplished author and teacher
  • Group discussion and feedback
  • Seminars on technique, craft, query letters, and agent/editor submissions
  • Ample time to write and revise

The Whole Novel Workshop offers writers the rare opportunity to have the entire draft of a novel read and critiqued prior to the workshop, followed by a week of intense, one-on-one mentoring.
 
The Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Workshop Difference
 
AN INTIMATE PROGRAM Each Whole Novel Workshop is limited to sixteen students. Each faculty member will work with only four students, providing undivided attention and several one-on-one sessions as well as a reading of your complete manuscript prior to the workshop.
 
A PLACE TO WRITE Each attendee has a rustic but comfortable cabin, complete with its own bathroom, coffee maker, and refrigerator. You will have your own quiet place in which to write and revise.
 
TIME TO FOCUS During your workshop, you’ll be able to focus—maybe for the first time—on nothing but your novel. You won’t hear a TV in the background or have kids demanding attention. You won’t have to stop to do laundry or cook or clean. You won’t be distracted by a constantly ringing phone.
 
A BEAUTIFUL SETTING Tucked in the northern Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, the mid-nineteenth-century farmhouse, home of the Founders of Highlights for Children, has played host to numerous creative spirits. The brand-new Barn at Boyds Mills, built from local wood and fieldstone, provides a revitalizing space for writers to work and confer.

Workshop Leaders

Tami Lewis Brown

Tami Lewis Brown holds an MFA in Writing for Children from Vermont College. She has been a lawyer and is the author of Soar Elinor!, Tami is also the author of the middle grade novel The Map of Me, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2011.  To read more about Tami, visit www.tamilewisbrown.com.

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Sarah Aronson

Sarah Aronson holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of two books for young readers and the young adult novel, Head Case (Roaring BrookPress 2007), named a 2008 Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. Her novel Beyond Lucky was published by Dial Books in 2010.

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Helen Hemphill

Helen Hemphill’s debut novel Long Gone Daddy won the Teddy Award and was named to the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age, 2007. Booklist named her second novel Runaround a 2007 Top Ten Youth Romance, and The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones, her most recent novel, was the recipient of the 2008 Virginia M.

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Melanie Kroupa

Melanie Kroupa has over thirty-five years of experience editing award-winning books for children and young adults, most recently as an editor at large with Marshall Cavendish Children's Books and with her own imprint at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Special Guests

Alma Fullerton

Alma Fullerton was born in Ottawa, Ontario, as one of seven children. Her dad was in the military so they moved when his postings changed, first to Trenton when she was two, then to Comox when she was twelve. Having a learning disability, she couldn't read until grade four and didn't enjoy reading at all until grade nine, when she discovered books that she really loved.

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Joni Sensel

Joni Sensel is the author of four novels for young readers, two clandestine picture books, and several nonfiction books for adults. The Farwalker’s Quest is her best-known work for kids.

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Rebecca Stead

Special guest Rebecca Stead is the author of three middle-grade novels: When You Reach Me, winner of the 2010 Newbery Medal and the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Fiction; First Light, a Junior Library Guild Selection and New York Public Library Best Book for the Teen Age; and Liar & Spy, coming August 2012.

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Workshop Information

July
8
at 3PM
through
July
14
after brunch
$2,665
Request an Application


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Our Scholarships

The Highlights Foundation has a number of scholarship opportunities available.

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