As I am preparing to go live, make my books, and be carried away by more creative projects in Mexico, I have started to say my good-byes to many of the people that had been the pillars of my life her in the United States. Earlier this week, my critique group and I had a party to celebrate the great years we have shared together creating children's books.
Jim Averbeck, Maria Van Lieshout, Lynn Hazen, Karen Ehrhardt, Gianna Marino, and I have been the Revisionaries since 1997. We met during a Berkeley extension class for learning how to write children's books. When the course ended, about twenty of us agreed to continue meeting so that we could read and work together in our stories; out goal was to be able to write publishable works. By the third meeting only a handful of us remained.
To this day, we are six, and for nearly 16 years we have met two times at month to read, critic, revise, and create children's books. Together we have gone though births and rising children, heartbreaks and new beginnings, we have learned and we have taught, we have published and received prize and awards for our works.
At our party this week I had my son take some pictures of us. Here is an slide show of a handful of them.
Together We Are The Revisionaries from Yuyi Morales on Vimeo.
I am for even and ever in love with my Revisionaries.
Revisionaries 1999
2003
2005
2013
