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Nancy Blair, our Critique Group Coordinator, shows up before every meeting to ensure that members have a safe space to workshop their manuscripts. This allows the regional team to focus on the glorious job of setting up the projector and other equipment, but it also gives attending members a trusted face they know will be waiting for them. Thank you, Nancy, for all the time you’ve given to the chapter, and thank you, Scott Sherman, for agreeing to join Nancy in helping our members feel heard. With Nancy’s schedule shifting, we may be losing her soon, so I’m all the more grateful that Scott stepped up!
Cheryl McCosh, our Programming Chair, works behind the scenes, but you see the results of her hard work every time you attend a meeting. She hunts down talent and hand-selects our speakers. Then, she somehow convinces them to fill out all the forms and arrive early, ensuring you have a delightful educational experience. Without Cheryl, you’d be stuck with me showing you how to fold origami at our monthly meetings.
Jim Smolski, our Newsletter Column Writer, is always thinking of our chapter. Even though we can only publish one poem a month, he’s coming up with several a day, hoping one will be the spark that ignites your heart. If only I could be so prolific!
Margaret Lea, our KidLit Correspondent, joined us in March, and since then she has made sure members have access to all the fun information about our speakers before the meetings. I am utterly amazed at how quickly she can publish her interviews. There’s no doubt in my mind she’s the perfect person for the job. So, if you want to learn more about our monthly speakers, visit the blog and dig in!
Michelle Bryant, our New Member Coordinator, has been welcoming our new members since April. If you joined before that, you missed out and had to figure things out by digging around or—heaven forbid—actually asking! Because reaching out can be hard for some of us, Michelle ensures that people enter our region with a proper welcoming email and a few tips to get started. On top of that, she also initiated a picture book study, investing so much of her personal time to ensure it’s professional and valuable to our PB community.
Sydney Dunlap has been our PAL Coordinator since January, and we are so grateful to have her doing the job we weren't! We've been blown away by how masterfully she has taken to this role because, trust me, she didn't learn the job from us! Sydney has been making sure our published and listed members are finding the resources they need to market, socialize, and further their education. If Sydney ever leaves us and we return to our previous state, I fear the PALs may riot.
Sabina Grey has just signed her volunteer agreement as our General Webmaster! And, hold on, I need to find the right emoji for this...
Okay, found it!
🎉🥳🎉
Sabina is a quick learner and has already figured out how to post an article, so anyone looking for the recording of Kacy Ritter would have been able to find it, thanks to Sabina's article linking it on the website. As she learns more, she'll be relieving me of so much stress and I predict she will do a great job. Soon, when you go online to find events, you’ll actually see upcoming ones instead of last month’s, which I forgot to take down. If that sounds helpful to you, join me in being grateful for our hardworking volunteers!
There you have it. November or not, I am so grateful to our volunteers and our members. So whether you volunteer in an official capacity or lift me up by regularly attending with your smiling face, thank you for helping keep this chapter Houston strong.
Annie Harmon
Co-Regional Advisor
Houston SCBWI
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