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  Workshop Description Return to the 2003 Founders Workshops
 

Date: March 13–16, 2003
Begins Thursday at 6:00 P.M. with dinner; ends Sunday with lunch.

Designed For: Experienced nonfiction or historical fiction writers

Maximum Capacity: 12 participants
 

There's not much difference between writing history and historical fiction. Both rely on solid research and strong characters, plot, setting, and tone. This workshop features a combination of lectures, discussion, and intensive manuscript critique sessions, during which we will explore research methods and the writing and editorial processes. Meet editors and writers who specialize in history and historical fiction and learn

  • the importance of solid research;
  • how to find and evaluate source material; and
  • the art of combining research and imagination to create accurate and compelling stories.

Note: Participants will be given a preworkshop writing assignment that can be approached as either history or historical fiction.

  
General Workshop Information Request an Application for this Workshop
  Workshop Faculty


Carolyn Yoder

 Carolyn Yoder
Carolyn is senior history editor at Highlights. She has written extensively on research and writing history for children. Her new book, George Washington: The Writer, edited and compiled by Carolyn,
was released this spring.
Carolyn also reviews juvenile books for the Civil War Book Review and is a writer and editor for the New Jersey Historical Society. She has served as the award-winning editor in chief of Cobblestone: The History Magazine for Young People; Calliope, Faces, Odyssey, and as assistant publisher of Cobblestone Publishing, Inc., overseeing development of its book division.
Carolyn has also been the executive director of the New Hampshire Antiquarian Society, and a writing tutor at New England College.

Peter Lerangis		 Peter Lerangis
Peter Lerangis is hard at work on Smiler's Bones, a historical novel for teens based on the story of Minik, a Polar Eskimo boy orphaned in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Peter is the author of books for kids of all ages, which together have sold over 1.5 million copies.
His two-book adventure story, Antarctica, chosen by the Jason organization as one of the classics of polar literature for youth, is a novel that grew out of his passion for Ernest Shackleton's voyage. For Bantam's Time Machine and Time Traveler series, Peter wrote about Benjamin Franklin, World War II codebreakers, and the end of the dinosaurs. He is the author of an award-winning science fiction series, Watchers, for middle-graders, and a chapter book series of magical mysteries, Abracadabra. His teen thrillers, The Yearbook and Driver's Dead were international bestsellers; his many film novelizations include those for "The Sixth Sense," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Aladdin."
He has also ghost-written over 40 books in the various Baby-sitters Club series.

Peter has a degree in biochemistry from Harvard College. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and their two sons, ages 15 and 12.