Banner art by Michelle Weltz

Please send comments to Co-Assistant Regional Advisor Sue Lawrence at montana-ara2@scbwi.org. Thank you for your input.

News and Announcements

Awards and Grants

Current or upcoming opportunities include:

Summer Conference BIPOC Scholarship: Two scholarship winners will receive tuition to the 2026 SCBWI Virtual Summer Conference. The submission portal can be found in your Member Profile under the AWARDS tab. Submissions for the BIPOC Scholarship are open June 12 through July 8, midnight PST.

General Conference Scholarship: This scholarship provides tuition to the 2026 SCBWI Virtual Summer Conference for any SCBWI member experiencing financial hardship. The scholarship is open to SCBWI premium members only. The submission portal can be found in your Member Profile under the AWARDS tab. Submissions for the General Conference Scholarship are open June 12 through July 8, midnight PST.

Student Illustrator Scholarship: Two scholarship winners will receive tuition to the 2026 SCBWI Virtual Summer Conference. The submission portal can be found in your Member Profile under the AWARDS tab. Submissions for the Student Illustrator Scholarship are open June 12 through July 8, midnight PST.

Summer Conference Portfolio Showcase: SCBWI's annual Summer Portfolio Showcase is a career-launching opportunity for children's book illustrators. This juried showcase is a terrific way to get your illustrations in front of top publishing professionals. This year’s format will be a three-image portfolio, with links to your SCBWI Member Profile Illustrator Gallery. You must register AND upload images by July 20, 2026. PLEASE NOTE: There are no refunds given for the Portfolio Showcase once judging begins.

Emerging Voices Award: The SCBWI established the On-The-Verge Emerging Voices Award in 2012 with funding from Martin and Sue Schmitt of the 455 Foundation. The grant was created to foster the emergence of diverse voices in children’s books. Submissions are open July 1 through July 31, 2026.

Pitch-Perfect Translation Grant: The SCBWI Pitch-Perfect Translation Grant assists children’s book translators in the development of a specific translation project into English, which is not currently under contract. Up to two winners will be selected annually. Entrants will submit a written pitch of up to 500 words and a short translation sample of up to 500 words from the work being pitched. Each winner will receive $500 and the opportunity to craft a longer sample of up to 4000 words, which will be presented to agents, editors, and other industry professionals. Special consideration will be given to emerging translators and to works translated from underrepresented languages. Submissions will be accepted from July 1 to July 31, 2026.

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

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

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

Registration has opened for the 2026 SCBWI Virtual Summer Conference.

Ready to take your children’s book career to the next level? Wherever you are in your publishing journey, the Virtual Summer Conference provides an opportunity for growth, creativity, and connection.

Dive into every aspect of the children’s book world, from writing and illustrating to translating, marketing, and self-publishing. Put your art in front of industry pros in the career-launching Portfolio Showcase and pitch your book to acquiring agents and editors.

Get inspired by sessions tailored for illustrators, picture book authors, novelists, nonfiction writers, graphic novel creators, and more.

Come ready to be inspired and informed with keynote speakers Pam Muñoz Ryan and Brian Selznick; panels discussing the AI debate, the current state of children's publishing, and alternative paths to publication; and opportunities to pitch and network with other kidlit creators.

You’ll have access to all sessions' recordings through September 13, 2026 so you can learn and grow at your own pace. Join us and invest in your passion. It’s time to bring your stories to life!

Price: $195 for members, $295 for nonmembers).

Register for the summer conference using the button below.

Our virtual hobnobs are on hiatus.

We'd love your feedback! Please take a few minutes to give us your thoughts about Janet's webinar. Your comments help your regional team to improve and plan for future events. Thanks! The survey will remain open until July 31, 2026.

Janet Fox's webinar The Rocky Road to Publishing: Mapping the Smoothest Route for Your Book was immensely informative, covering the different options for publishing children's books.

You can still register for the webinar and receive the recordings as well as Janet's handouts.

Registrants will have access to the recordings through July 21, 2026.

Montana Sparks Show 2026

Your Montana regional team would like to extend a huge thank-you to those who made the 2026 Montana Sparks Show happen.

We released a new prompt on the 1st day each month for 12 months to encourage members to write or illustrate a piece for their portfolios or to spark new ideas for stories. Thank you, Megan Emmot for writing those creative prompts.

And continued thanks to our former Illustrator Coordinator Jeanne Bowman (whom we miss deeply already) for assembling the previous years' exhibits and making sure they traveled the state.

Last year we compiled our work and sent it to libraries across Montana to be exhibited. Members’ work was shown at the Billings Public Library, North Lake County Public Library in Polson, the Great Falls Public Library, and the Missoula Public Library.

Thank you so much to our wonderful librarians and member volunteers for doing 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!

And last, but certainly not least, we'd like to thank all of you who participated in the 2026 Sparks Show. This event wouldn't be the exciting collaboration that it is without your contributions.

Stay tuned to learn where this year's exhibit will be displayed and what's next for the Montana Sparks Show.

Kid-Lit Craft Corner

Want to be a guest contributor?

A note from the editor: 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? Or would you like to share a behind-the-scenes glimpse 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 montana-ara2@scbwi.org.

Note: Submissions are not guaranteed publication.

A HUGE thank you to Co-ARA Andi Utter for contributing the article for this issue.



In Conversation with Rosemary Wells:

Five Key Takeaways about Writing Picture Books

by Co-ARA Andi Utter

I was caught off guard by how blunt and honest Rosemary Wells is in real life. At 80 years old, she doesn’t waste time with pleasantries but is engaging and passionate about picture books and the world of being an author-illustrator. During her talk at the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman she offered a lot of advice, distilled down to five key messages below, and I hope they will be as useful to you as they were to me.

I.         Agents and publishers have one main concern: ‘Can I sell this?’ So before anything else, is your book sellable? Does it appeal to the general public and have that ‘in-commonness’ feel? Don't make it too niche.

II.         (This piece of advice hit home for me!) Don’t use events from real life in your books. What ends up going into a good book is the spirit of what happened—use that to color your story and writing. You are not here to carbon copy real life events into a book (unless it is non-fiction), but rather ‘life as it might be.’ For example, in the Max & Ruby books we see one bunny child is a chatterbox and does everything, while the other one grunts one- or two-word answers. This mimics a dynamic she knows from having children of her own, but she did not copy and paste her two children and their adventures directly into the story. It was the spirit of their communication, arguments, and conversations that informed her (the way children speak and act), which she was able to convey in her books authentically.

III.         Rosemary reminded us that children need some validation of their emotions and experiences. As a writer or illustrator, you are replicating the experience of a child in new clothes or new characters. Children can, in fact, be cruel, although most of them grow out of it by adulthood. Your story does not need an enormous amount of detail. Remember: a simple, sellable idea, easy to illustrate in a book. A story where children resolve the main conflict and adults are minor players in the game.

IV.         This was interesting, too: Rosemary recommends no more than four lines of text to a page. Picture books run between 24-32 pages, and you do not magically get to be the exception to the rule. Physically crafting a dummy of your book by folding eight sheets of paper in half and stapling them together provides a lot of visual feedback to modify and edit. How does the text look on the page? Does the story flow from one page to the next, or are there some sticky parts? In addition, can you set up your book in the first two sentences? Want cake, no money. Want friends, too shy to speak. Introducing conflict early is a great start to getting us to stay and read the rest of your book. As a picture book creator, you are crafting a piece of art for adults and children to enjoy together, which is always good to keep in mind.

V.         Lastly, avoid being too heavy-handed or patronizing in your work. Fun fact: this is the biggest reason Rosemary doesn’t like Sesame Street. In your book you are looking to create a child-friendly, or better yet funny, take on a subject. Try to end on a surprise or with something unexpected. Kids aren’t interested in a book with a preachy or goody-two-shoes vibe. When you are starting out as a creator for kids, don’t come at it with a huge agenda (especially since there is enough of that elsewhere). It cycles back to creating a story which appeals to the general public, one that parents, grandparents, and children will want to read together.

“I want to save you time–not dash your hopes.” 

—Rosemary Wells

I fell in love with Rosemary’s newest book The Little Chefs. Keep an eye out for her upcoming kindness handbook, which comes out next year. (We saw a sneak peek at our meetup with her).

Rosemary reminds us the path to create for children is not for everyone. But if you want it badly enough it is possible. It all begins with writing (or drawing) a simple idea down. And, eliminating distractions to put pen to paper, even if it is just five minutes at a time.



For more information about Rosemary Wells and her work as an author-illustrator visit https://www.rosemarywells.com/.

Andi Utter is one of SCBWI-Montana's Co-Assistant Regional Advisors. She is a passionate copywriter and ESL instructor who is working toward writing her first picture book manuscript. You can find her on Substack at Real Talk Traveler, or on Instagram at @andivididodo where she posts about travel, kidlit, and other quirky affairs. She is based in Kalispell, Montana with frequent trips to foreign countries.

Seeking Reviewers

As everyone knows, honest reviews are essential when launching a new book. LuAnn Rod's new novel, Maddie McDowell and the Missing Mustangs, is a sequel to her first middle grade novel, Maddie McDowell and the Rodeo Robbery and will be released on October 6th. Preorders open in August.

LuAnn is seeking reviewers and will provide Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) to anyone who is able and willing. Here's a bit about it:

In Maddie McDowell and the Missing Mustangs, young rodeo star Maddie McDowell is back in a high-flying historical western adventure full of action, mystery, and heart.

The Monte Decker Rodeo has rolled into Bear Creek, Montana, for the 1919 Fourth of July celebration, and twelve, nearly thirteen-year-old Maddie McDowell is raring to compete. But on her way there, she finds an orphaned newborn foal, which leads to a brand-new, high-flying mystery for this young Pinkerton in training. 

Something, or someone, has spirited away the valley’s Ghost Mountain wild horses, and Maddie and her friends are on the hunt to find out what happened. Not only does she have to keep her promise to the young colt that she’ll find his mother, but she also must return the missing historically-unique herd to its home.

All the usual suspects from Maddie’s first rodeo go-round are there but this time, a World War I flying ace barnstormer has also soared in. The pilot’s familar face sends Maddie reeling as years of betrayal make her question everything about the man in the airplane—her brother Robert. Will family secrets and hurts prove too much to forgive and forget?

The stakes are life and death for both the mustangs and Maddie as she races to save the horses, win the rodeo, and maybe even learn that family sometimes means risking all.

If you are interested in reviewing LuAnn's new book, please send your name and email to her at luannrod@gmail.com.