Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton

Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton — Interview Excerpt, part EIGHT

We have come to the last excerpt of my interview with Emma Walton Hamilton for the Children’s Book Hub. I have appreciated the opportunity to share it with you, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. You may not know that Emma independently published her book Raising Bookworms: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment, a book I recommend highly. She and Christian McLean of Stony Brook Southampton, who has indie-published his picture book Duckhampton, talked very knowledgeably about independent publishing in a panel discussion at last summer’s Stony Brook Southampton Children’s Literature Conference. Her independent publishing company, Beech Tree Books, is one of our topics today. For full biographical information on Emma, as well as information on all the services she provides writers of children’s books, please check her website, http://www.emmawaltonhamilton.com And now, for the final part of our interview:

Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton — Interview Excerpt, Part SEVEN

Thank you for joining me for this seventh excerpt from the interview I did with Emma Walton Hamilton back in January, for the Children’s Book Hub. Besides the myriad other things Emma does, which we have talked about in previous excerpts, she also is director of the Stony Brook Southampton Children’s Literature Conference (which I attended last year, and which I highly recommend), and is involved in the new Children’s Literature Fellows Program at Stony Brook Southampton. As if that weren’t enough, this year she is teaching the picture book workshop at the Children’s Literature Conference. (Note: My Monday blog post featured an interview with a success story from the Children’s Literature Conference, Susan Verde.) In this week’s excerpt of the interview, most of our focus will be on these two programs.

Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton — Interview Excerpt, Part SIX

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Thank you for joining me for this excerpt from my interview with Emma Walton Hamilton for the Children’s Book Hub. Emma is the founder and administrator of the online “salon for writers and illustrators” that is the Children’s Book Hub. She started it just over two years ago, and in this excerpt of the interview, she shares with us her thoughts behind its founding, as well as her hopes and plans for its future. Through the Children’s Book Hub, Emma shares resources, a monthly newsletter, an opportunity for writers and illustrators to share in an online forum, and perhaps most importantly, Emma shares her connections with the wider world of children’s books and her vast knowledge (and amazing research abilities) through monthly Expert Interview audio webinars with someone like author Andrea Davis Pinkney or Tomie dePaola, SCBWI co-founder Lin Oliver, Hornbook editor Roger Sutton, freelance editor Emma D. Dryden, agent Jennie Dunham… the list goes on. Hub members always have an opportunity to submit questions in advance for these interviews. Also every month, Emma provides a Question and Answer audio webinar in which she answers Hub members questions on a particular topic, usually relating to that month’s Expert Interview. The interview I’m serializing here came about when I suggested it was high time Emma herself was featured in an Expert Interview. Now, let’s see what Emma has to say about the Children’s Book Hub, and the offshoot Children’s Book Hub Facebook Group which she and I co-host.

Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton — Interview Excerpts, Part FIVE

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Thank you for joining me for this fifth excerpt in my serialization of the webinar interview I did with Emma Walton Hamilton for the Children’s Book Hub in January. Today, Emma will be musing about some of the discoveries she’s made about herself on the writing journey, and she’ll also tell us how and why she developed her online picture-book writing course, Just Write for Kids. Emma is an educator, through and through. For years she taught acting, drama, and playwriting. She teaches Children’s Literature at Stony Brook Southampton University. She is executive director of the Young Artists and Writers Project (YAWP), and most germane to our discussion today, she developed and teaches the online/home study course, Just Write for Kids. As we have seen in previous excerpts of this interview, teaching brings Emma fully to life, and her teaching inspires the same in her students. Let’s see what she has to say, shall we?

Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton — Interview Excerpts, Part FOUR

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As I have done for the past few weeks, today I’m sharing an excerpt from the interview I did with Emma Walton Hamilton for the Children’s Book Hub on January 8, 2013. Emma is a bestselling writer, along with her mother, Julie Andrews, of picture books, easy reader/chapter books and middle grade novels. She is also an insightful freelance editor who has a keen eye, a knowledge of craft, an ability to see the whole picture, to see the story arc and to help writers to fully realize the potential of their manuscripts. (I speak from experience. Emma has worked with me on several of my manuscripts through manuscript evaluations and line edits, and she has helped me enormously in taking my writing to the next level.) In today’s excerpt from the full interview, Emma and I talk about how she got into editing. We had been discussing her theatre experience, and segued very naturally into the subject of her editing work.

Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton — Interview Excerpts Part THREE

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This continues the serialization of an oral interview I did with Emma Walton Hamilton, founder of the Children’s Book Hub, for the Hub on January 8, 2013. Today we’re learning about Emma’s background and training in the theatre. From the “Meet Emma” page on Emma’s website: Emma worked as an actress in theater, film and television for ten years before turning her attention towards directing, producing, educating and writing. She was a faculty member at the Ensemble Studio Theater Institute, and later became one of the founders of Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York. She served as Bay Street’s Co-Artistic Director for thirteen years, then chose to focus her energies on the Theatre’s educational and young audience outreach as Director of Education and Programming for Young Audiences until 2008. She has co-written lyrics for several songs, including “The Show Must Go On” recorded by Julie Andrews, and “On My Way” recorded by Laughing Pizza, and selections of her poetry are included in Julie Andrews’ Collection Of Poems, Songs And Lullabies. Emma and her mother also completed stage and symphonic adaptations of Simeon’s Gift, which was developed at Bay Street Theatre and went on symphonic tour to venues including the Hollywood Bowl, Atlanta Symphony and the O2 Arena in the UK under the banner of Julie Andrews’ Gift of Music. Emma is a member of the Author’s Guild, The Dramatists’ Guild, The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the International Reading Association, SAG, AEA, AFTRA and ASCAP. She has served on the theater panel for the New York State Council on the Arts, as a National Ambassador for The Broadway League’s “Kids’ Night on Broadway”, and as a trustee for the Morriss Center School in Bridgehampton, NY, and the Center for Therapeutic Riding of the East End (CTREE). An accomplished public speaker, Emma addresses arts and literary conferences, schools, universities and other groups on a regular basis about the value of, and synergy between, the arts and literacy. And now to today’s excerpt from the interview:

Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton — (Interview Excerpts) Part TWO

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On January 8, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing, for the Children’s Book Hub‘s monthly Expert Interview, Emma Walton Hamilton, founder of the Hub. We had a wonderful time chatting about many things relating to children’s literature and to Emma’s varied career. Emma has written 27 books for children with her co-author (and mother) Julie Andrews, as well as an excellent resource book for getting kids to read, Raising Bookworms: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment. This week, their picture book The Very Fairy Princess Follows Her Heart rose to number TWO on the New York Times bestseller picture book list. Congratulations are certainly due them both. In this week’s episode of the interview, Emma talks about the books that laid the foundation for her love of children’s literature, the books that were meaningful in her own childhood.

Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton — (interview excerpts) Part One

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On January 8th, 2013, author, charter Children’s Book Hub member and Co-Host of the Children’s Book Hub Facebook group, Beth Stilborn, (yes, me) interviewed author, editor, educator and Hub founder Emma Walton Hamilton. This was an oral interview, by phone. It was part of the regular “Expert Interviews” that Emma does for the Hub — this time she was the expert being interviewed. The transcript is now available, and with Emma’s permission, I will be serializing this interview (because it’s too long for one post!) over the next several weeks in a series called “Thursdays with Emma Walton Hamilton.” Emma is a best-selling children’s book author, editor, educator and arts and literacy advocate. She has co- authored over twenty children’s books with her mother, Julie Andrews, seven of which have been on the New York Times best-seller list. Each week I’ll be giving you another portion of Emma’s bio, followed by part of our interview. I hope you enjoy getting to know Emma better.