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The Young Writers' Conference (YWC) is proud
to continue their tradition of community service at Alta Vista
Elementary, where it was founded 12 years ago, on Friday, March
26th. The YWC staff and workshop instructors donate their
time and launch the theme for the following season, 2010-11.
The new theme is Discover the Power of Words. The Young
Writers' Conference is a Los Angeles based organization dedicated to
improving young people's writing skills by first instilling a passion for
writing. 
"Our schools are suffering from so many cutbacks in programs and
services, due to the budget shortfalls," comments YWC co-founder,
Julie Moore. "We are proud that we have been able to continue to
present this day long, professional conference as our gift to Alta Vista,
our founding school. These specialized educational experiences are more
important than ever."
"Everyone that is
involved with the conference donates their time and talents for this one
annual conference," continues Rena Svetic, co-founder.
"We are passionate in our belief that writing skills create opportunities
that our students need in order to be competitive in today's
marketplace. Our thanks to everyone that donated their time to make
this conference possible, in particular liaison
Merri Weir and her core team Laura Bevan, Mary Ganis, Robyn Solimando, and
Rosalinda Garcia."
"Since the
beginning of the school year, we have been working with the Young
Writers' Conference directors to make today exceptional,"
explains Alta Vista principal, Anthony J. Taranto.
"Teachers, school staff, parents, volunteers, sponsors, Alta Vista
Student Council, and PTA have worked hard to support this
experience, which is designed to spark student's creativity and
provide them with the opportunity to express themselves in
new and exciting ways. We want to thank them, along with everyone in
the Young Writers' Conference organization for donating their time,
talents, and energies to our Alta Vista community."
 The
Alta Vista YWC Student Committee (pictured) has been busy running a
writing contest, an in-school public relations campaign, and working on
the conference production. Winners of the writing contest will have
their worked featured on the school and the YWC websites. All the
contest entries will be published by Scribble Press in a special book and
donated to the Alta Vista library.
A special assembly for kindergarten through 2nd grade will
be held at 10am with Dan Crow, popular childrens' songwriter and
entertainer.
Keynote Speaker
Opening up the day's
conference for 3rd through 5th graders will be Stephen P. Breen,
editorial cartoonist for The San Diego Union-Tribune since 2001.
His work is nationally syndicated by Creators News Service and regularly
appears in USA Today, The New York Times and Newsweek.
Steve is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning
(1998, 2009). He is also the recipient of the 2007 Berryman Award for
editorial cartooning given by the National Press Foundation, The 2009
Thomas Nast Award given by The Overseas Press Club and the 2009 National
Headliner Award. In his spare time, Steve writes and illustrates picture
books for Penguin including Stick (2007) Violet The Pilot
(2008) and The Secret of Santa's Island (2009).
  
Conference
After the keynote
address, the students will attend three different workshops that
they selected and registered for online. The
students had a wide variety of sessions to choose from, ranging from
poetry to cartooning, from historical fiction to play writing, and
from songwriting to advertising copy-writing. All are led by
accomplished authors and educators and designed to create an environment
where the joy of writing and self-expression is celebrated.
New Workshops
include:
Keynote Speaker,
Stephen Breen will conduct a workshop entitled: The Power of
Cartooning: How to Make Your Friends and Classmates Wet their Pants.
In this workshop students will learn the basics of editorial, gag, and
comic strip cartooning. The art of caricature will also be
discussed. Mr. Breen will show examples and draw live
demonstrations of each topic. He'll also walk students though the
process of writing and drawing their own works of satire and side
splitting entertainment.
Dennis Komick has
developed a workshop entitled, Character Development and Storyline
for your Favorite Pets! Komick has written two children's
books based on the real life stories of his actual dogs, Brodie
& The Yeti. The books are intended to give
children fun, moral based stories to learn about adoption,
acceptance, sharing, and friendship. Dennis is the author/creator
of the Brodie & The Yeti characters and owner of BATY
Publishing. In this workshop students will learn how to create
characters and stories based on their favorite animal or pet. www.brodieandtheyeti.com
 Charlotte
Kandel, is also new to the Young Writers' Conference. She
will present a workshop titled Enchanted Worlds: Writing Magical
Adventures. Before becoming a published writer, Charlotte
worked behind the scenes as a top publicist in the fascinating world of
celebrity public relations. Most recently she spent 15 years as
Worldwide Head of Publicity for Warner Bros. Pictures where she worked on
a daily basis with almost any superstar you could name. But really
what Charlotte wanted to do was to write books. She particularly wanted
to write about MAGIC, dangerous, glittering, fantastic magic to stir the
mind and the imagination. The first book in Charlotte's magical
realism trilogy, THE SCARLET STOCKINGS: The Enchanted Riddle,
was published last year by Dutton's Children's Books and has since gone
on to success and much praise from readers and critics alike. (You
can read Chapter l online). Participants in her workshop will
create their own "Enchanted Worlds" by writing a short story
with magic in it. www.scarletstockings.com
 Writer Updates
John Bogert,
veteran Daily Breeze columnist and long time instructor with The Young
Writers' Conference, has published a new book comprised of some of the
6000 columns he has written for the Daily Breeze in the past two
decades. He will lead his workshop at Alta Vista, How to Write a
Newspaper Column. His new book, Grounded, is
available at bogert.donegalbooks.com.
Richard Schenkman, another Young
Writers' Conference veteran, has a newly published book, The Girl
from Atlantis, with an interactive website that is full of
games and free entertainment: www.thegirlfromatlantis.com.
In Schenkman's workshop, We Have Ways of Making You Talk,
students will learn to write snappy dialogue for their stories and film
scripts.
 The day
concludes with a Writers' Wrap Up assembly.
Bookstore
Mrs. Nelson's Bookstore
will be on campus and open during lunch and after the wrap-up
session. Books by the featured authors will be available, along
with other popular children's books. The authors will be on hand to
autograph copies of their books, CDs and DVDs.
*Please note: all images are for informational purposes
only, and are the property of their respective copyright holders.
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We hit our goal of 100 families participating, but other schools have done better! Alta Vista is currently in 4th place and we could still lose ground. Ask your neighbors, friends, family, and local businesses if they can help out. Just $25 can earn us hundreds or thousands for Alta Vista, and really help out the RBEF which is the main fuindraising organization for education in Redondo Beach.
