Banner art by Michelle Weltz

Please send comments to Regional Advisor Jodi Hausen at montana-ra@scbwi.org. Thank you for your input.

News and Announcements

Dear Members,

This is a bittersweet announcement as it is about a change to our Regional Team and a goodbye to one of our amazing team members. Santral Lusin, our wonderful Assistant Regional Advisor, is stepping down from the role to focus on family and her creative work.

Santral has been with us for four years tackling much of our region’s heavy lifting that many members might not be aware of. When SCBWI adopted a new website, it created a lot of chaos for regional teams. Santral jumped in with both feet using her brilliant brain to sort out our web pages making them streamlined and easy for members to access. This was no small feat! She created beautiful event graphics, helped members with their memberships and renewals, brainstormed exciting events for both writers and illustrators, and so much more! We are sad to see her leave, but Santral is eager to turn her incredible drive and focus to her creative work. We cannot be more excited for her.

You might know this from our interview with her last year, but Santral is the author-illustrator of Cloud, Your Burps Are Loud!, a picture book about the sounds one hears during a rainstorm. This is the first in a series of exciting books about the weather she has been working on for years including Yellow Cracks in the Sky and Drip Drop which are soon to be published. So, while this transition is sad, we excitedly anticipate publication of more brilliant books for kids.

We’d like to extend our gratitude to Santral for dedicating so much of her time and energy to this position and helping make our region shine. We will miss you.

Fortunately, you can still connect with Santral through her website and I’m sure we will see her around at future events and meetups. As has been noted by members from other regions, though we are spread out geographically, our region is a tight-knit group filled with wonderful members who reach out to support each other in all our endeavors. So thank YOU also, for making this region a real treasure.

Best Wishes,

Jeanne Bowman, Illustrator Coordinator

Jodi Hausen, Regional Advisor

Landmark Class-action Lawsuit

to Benefit Published Authors

by Regional Advisor Jodi Hausen

Earlier this month, tech company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion in what is believed to be the largest copyright infringement settlement in U.S. history. According to the court’s order (as reported by the Authors Guild), Anthropic downloaded over seven million books from pirate sites and digitized millions of purchased print books to train its large language models.

If you are a published author, you may be eligible to receive approximately $3,000 per title.

• Your book(s) must have an ISBN or ASIN that was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office within five years of the work’s publication and before the download dates

OR

• Was registered with the Copyright Office within three months of publication

The Authors Guild filed an amicus brief in the case. As such, if you are an AG member, your contact information has already been provided to attorneys so you won’t need to submit it via the contact form, though you may.

If you are not an Authors Guild member and you believe Anthropic downloaded your books from the pirate sites LibGen or PiLiMi, fill out this contact form to receive notifications about the settlement.

More details about the lawsuit can be found here and here.

BookStop Returns This Holiday Season!s!

Get ready to spotlight your books in front of thousands of readers, gift-givers, and book lovers! SCBWI’s beloved BookStop promotion is back. It's your exclusive opportunity to showcase your published works on our highly visited website during the biggest shopping season of the year.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Open to all SCBWI members—both traditionally and self-published authors, illustrators, and translators.
• Featuring books published between Jan 1, 2023, and Dec 31, 2025.
• Purchase a customizable BookStop page for just $25 starting September 3. BookStop is hosted on the SCBWI website.
• Your book will be promoted from October 15 through December 3, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday!
• SCBWI will support the promotion with paid advertising across social media platforms, driving traffic directly to BookStop.

Don’t miss this once-a-year opportunity to boost your holiday sales and visibility.

Your book deserves the spotlight—let’s make it shine this season with BookStop!

Learn more at SCBWI.org/bookstop-faq or start designing your page here.

Awards and Grants

Current or upcoming opportunities include:

Amber Brown Grant: the grant celebrates schools that are committed to fostering a love of reading and writing in their students. Whether your school is large or small, urban or rural, public or private, all are welcome to enter. We want to hear about your school and its experience with author-illustrator visits. This is your chance to give your students a direct connection to the creative process and inspire them to see themselves as storytellers, readers, and dreamers. Submissions are open through October 31.

Narrative Art Award: Each year, a rotating panel of judges will provide an assignment and will judge the submissions. The theme and specific assignment will change year to year, but the general goal will be to show sequence and narrative. The prize is an all-expense-paid trip to the SCBWI New York Winter Conference. The winning illustrations will be displayed during the New York Portfolio Showcase (in conjunction with the conference). Submissions are open October 1 through October 31.

Featured Illustrator: features one illustrator member each month. The Featured Illustrator’s art is highlighted prominently on the homepage and all SCBWI social media.

Draw This!: A monthly art prompt, part of the SCBWI publication Insight. Two winners will be featured in Insight and on SCBWI social media.

Independently Published Pre-publication Grant: This grant provides $2,500 to a chosen member to help cover costs associated with self-publishing. Submissions are open November 1 through November 30.

Visit the Awards and Grants page of the SCBWI website to learn more about these awards. And remember to check the newsfeed on your member home page for other opportunities.

Come Join our Monthly Virtual Hobnobs

Montana Sparks Show 2025

by Illustrator Coordinator Jeanne Bowman

The SCBWI Montana SPARKS! show was recently exhibited at the Great Falls Public Library!

Thank you so much to the Great Falls Library for giving us space on your wall! Thank you to Karen Sanders for hanging the show for us!

We'd also like to express our gratitude to Marcia Williams who helped set up the exhibition with Abbi Dooley at the Polson Library. And thanks to Joshua Harper for connecting Jeanne Bowman with the library in Missoula—where the Sparks Show will be exhibited this winter.

So far the show pieces have hung at the wonderful Billings Public Library, the fantastic North Lake Public Library in Polson, and soon in Great Falls! Thank you so much to our wonderful librarians for doing all of the hard work to showcase great writing and art for children.

We need these services now more than ever and hope you will head into your local library to support their efforts!

Photo courtesy: Great Falls Public Library

Don't forget: Sparks sessions have resumed! 

On the first of every month through April 2026, we will email you a shiny new prompt written by Megan Emmot. You can use this prompt to create a new story, poem, or illustration for your portfolio. We will share our work at our monthly co-working sessions, which will take place on the second Saturday of each month at 1 p.m. Mountain Time. (Sharing your work is always optional).

You can work on the prompts even if you don't attend the co-working sessions and you can attend the co-working sessions even if you don't work on the prompts. The sessions are meant as a way to socialize, share your work, get feedback, and to set aside some time to work on your creative project. The sessions are generally divided into two 45-minute blocks: one for working, the other for sharing. 

All creators are welcome at these sessions. Links to the sessions will be emailed, so keep your eyes peeled for them!

Email montana-ic@scbwi.org if you have any questions.

Represent your Home Region!

by Regional Advisor Jodi Hausen

In July, the folks at SCBWI headquarters excitedly announced a new function on its website that will make it easier for members to find other kid-lit creators in their region. Now members can choose a home region on their profile to distinguish where they reside from other regions they may follow. You can still follow as many other regions as you wish, but choosing a home region will:

• Keep you updated on local events and opportunities
• Help you connect with your regional volunteers and members
• Strengthen your connection to the SCBWI community

Please take a moment to make these changes on your member profile.

Just head to scbwi.org and follow these quick steps: 

• Go to your “Member Home” page
• Click the “My Profile” button
• Then “Edit My Profile” button
• Scroll down the page and click “Set your SCBWI home region”
• Click the arrow and choose your home region to add it to your profile.

A couple of quick clicks and you’re done. And who wouldn’t want to choose Montana as their home region? Am I right?

Kid Lit Craft Corner

Want to be a guest contributor?

We know there are a lot of resident experts out there across our great state of Montana, and we'd love to hear from you. Have you discovered some tips that could help your fellow kid-lit creators? Have you read a great craft book or utilized some other resource you want to tell us about? Would you like to share a behind-the-scenes piece about how you created your last book? We would love to include more guest articles from our members in upcoming newsletters.

We ask that articles be no more than 800 words and be written with the goal of helping or inspiring our writers and/or illustrators. Guest contributors will receive space for a short bio and a link to their website and social media. If you have something you'd like to share, please email the article (or a proposal) to mtscbwisocial@gmail.com.

Note: Submissions are not guaranteed publication.

A HUGE thank you to former RA Joann Howeth for contributing the kid-lit craft article for this issue.



NEW KID ON THE BLOCK



by Joann Howeth

Guest Contributor

School visits!  

So scary for a non-teacher.  And yet...this is one of the aspects of becoming a published author I have dreamed about for years. Although, to be completely honest, the desire intensified the summer of 2016 when I attended my first SCBWI summer conference in Los Angeles.

I got to hear Drew Daywalt, author of The Day the Crayons Quit, give a keynote address that launched the entire weekend for me. His advice that day: “Every story has already been told, but not in your voice. Be honest to your own voice. Be vulnerable—nobody looks good naked!”

I realize nine years later that vulnerability and nakedness are not exactly exclusive to one another, so this advice doesn’t quite make sense, but this whimsical introduction is a perfect example of Drew’s lightheartedness and humility. 

Ever self-effacing, it was Drew’s next statement that had me hooked. He talked about how he feels like a rock star every time he enters a gymnasium full of screaming and cheering elementary school students. Well, that did it!

Who doesn’t want to feel like a rock star? 

This last May I took the plunge into the world of school visits. My picture book, The Mollys B., had been released in April and, with the assistance of second grade teacher and fellow SCBWI member, Janae Christensen, I had been invited to speak at four schools in Kalispell and Columbia Falls. I was very excited but equally unsure about my skills to stand in front of a classroom of children and offer them anything of value. 

My college goal, many many years ago, was to become a high school English teacher. I’d learned the rudiments like how to design a lesson plan, but after that my memory’s pretty vague. My student teaching experience (with seventh graders) bombed big time, so for years thereafter I accepted that the classroom was going to be forever foreign soil.

Imagine my surprise then when I entered these classrooms in May, and for all my trepidation, ended up having the best time of my life. Since my visits ranged from grades K-5, I had to design two different presentations, mostly for the “wiggle factor.” If you’ve seen my book, you know that it features two characters whose stories are told side by side. Because of its format The Mollys B. is challenging to read in the conventional “get-comfy-on-the-floor, kids in a half-circle, hold the book in such a way so everyone can see the pictures while you twist your neck at an odd angle so you can simultaneously read the text” kind of experience. The dual story format is confusing in this context—the separate stories divided by only the gutter make it difficult for kids to track which story is being read as each character alternately takes the stage. Plus, the illustrations are so beautiful—humorous and whimsical—it’s easy to get lost in them. There’s a desire to look and linger.

To solve this problem, I decided to create a slide show that displayed each page individually.  Additionally, I prefaced the actual reading of the book with short lessons designed for the differing age groups (and attention spans). The younger children were challenged to think about the meaning of the word “parallel” in preparation for the book’s format while the older kids discussed varying aspects of the sinking of RMS Titanic with emphasis on the meaning of the word “irony.” It was great fun to watch them make the connection that the ship that was deemed unsinkable was, in fact, the polar opposite. 

Then I threw in some theatrics; the teachers and I put on costumes and the children got to vote on who their teacher would “be”—Margaret Tobin Brown or Molly Bovine. (Need I tell you that most classrooms voted for their teacher to don the cow ears?) The children had the movie-like experience of getting to see each page enlarged and were able to concentrate on which story was being told by attending to which one of us was speaking. I’m confident it was an effective solution that helped the children focus. I had a script, of course, and stuck pretty closely to it. But as I became more comfortable with my own material, I was eventually able to ad-lib a little bit. It didn’t take me long to get into a groove. 

My foray into school visits turned out to be delightful and not at all scary. The teachers were welcoming as were the students who were attentive and eager to engage with me as a guest. And although there was no screaming or cheering, it was pretty darned “rock star” special. 

Joann Howeth is a native Montanan residing in Helena. You can learn more about her and her two award-winning picture books Sometimes and The Mollys B. on her website joannhoweth.com.



Celebration Corner

—where we share book news

of our Montana members

So many books to celebrate!