Today I am THRILLED, THRILLED, THRILLED, to tell you about summer school!

WHAAAT? Summer school?

Yep. Summer school for KidLit writers. I’m proud to say that I’m a third year, so I know my way around. I can tell you what to do if you forget your homework and, even better, how to win prizes. Yep, I won a nice prize pack last summer, a half-dozen lovely books. All I had to do was pay attention in class. Pretty cool, huh?

Kami Kinard and Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen are the summer school principals. Their blog, Nerdy Chicks Rule, started out featuring interviews with strong women along with personal essays about women’s issues. They soon realized they had a large following of people interested in writing. Since they both teach writing, Kami and Sudipta wanted to offer a blog-based program for writers and a website wholly devoted to writing craft. With so many excellent writing programs already available, they knew they wanted to do something just as useful, but different. They decided on a four week program that focuses a different aspect of the craft of writing each year. Thus, Nerdy Chicks Write and Kidlit Summer School were born!

We invited Kami and Sudipta to The Winged Pen to tell us more about summer school!

Michelle: Thanks so much for visiting us at The Winged Pen. We’d loved for our followers who might not have heard of KidLit Summer School to know more. Is there homework? Punishment for being late to class? How hard are the tests? How much does it cost?

KLSS: You can get most of what we offer at Kidlit Summer School for free! This year, that includes TWENTY posts on craft by some of the BEST authors in the kidlit community and at least TWO free webinars! Homework is completely voluntary and work-at-your-own-pace. Every post has a free downloadable, printable, exercise to go along with it. At the end of each week, we have quizzes for review. These are designed to offer a fun review of the week. We also have recess, kind of! This is our Facebook group that all registered participants can join. There you can chat and network with others in the kidlit community.

Michelle: Oh, yes! Recess is waaaay fun! I’ve met so many supportive writing friends through KLSS. I’m not just trying to be the teacher’s pet when I say that the homework is very helpful. Oh, and the pop quizzes too!

KLSS: Glad you’ve been enjoying summer school! As we already mentioned, you can get all of the above for free! We also offer several extra webinars for a small charge. This is to offset the cost of Kidlit Summer School and because we want to offer our excellent webinar guests stipends. Because running each webinar is labor intensive, we are going to charge one fee for all extra webinars this year, instead of signing people up individually for each one. This will allow us to spend our time on other aspects of Kidlit Summer School.

We do want to stress that signing up for the paid webinars is completely voluntary – just something extra we offer, like icing on the cake.

Michelle: I can vouch for the awesomeness of the webinars, definitely worth the couple of bucks they’ve cost in the past. And even if you don’t participate in the webinars, there’s plenty to learn in class each day. Speaking of class, 2014 KidLit Summer School was about plot. 2015 KLSS was about character. Tell us about what amazing theme you have planned for 2016!

KLSS: This year our theme is Heart and Humor. We often hear editors saying they are looking for books with these two things. We have some wonderful authors lined up to help participants find ways to enrich their manuscripts by adding heart and humor!

Michelle: Sounds super! My favorite books normally have a heaping spoonful of both heart and humor. The faculty that you pull together for summer school is AMAZING every year. Are there any new faculty this year that might get our followers excited?

KLSS: We think all of our KLSS faculty is amazing, and there are some bestselling authors on our faculty this year that will definitely get participants excited!

Last year we added a board of education to help us with the tremendous job that Kidlit Summer School is. We’re happy to say that those authors, Leeza Hernandez, Dawn Young, and Marcie Colleen are on board with us again for Kidlit Summer School 2016.

Michelle: Yay! And the faculty sometimes gives away books, critiques, and swag! Any secret news you can share that no one else knows about this year’s summer school?

KLSS: Actually we do have some secret good news that we haven’t shared yet. This year we are adding a week of pre-summer school to the schedule! For this week, some returning faculty will be sharing ideas and strategies for getting in the zone for writing and finding inspiration. We think this will be a great way to gear everyone up for the weeks  of learning ahead. These posts will start on June 27th. We will then take the week of July 4th off and dive into heart and humor on the first official day of KLSS, July 11th.

Michelle: June 27th!! That’s less than two weeks away! Wow, I better start sharpening my pencils. Pre-registration is already open! I know because I signed up as soon as the window opened! What are the benefits of pre-registering?

KLSS: Pre-registering allows students to be the first to get any news we share via emails. All who pre-register are automatically eligible for prizes given out during Kidlit Summer School. We also have a pre-registration bonus this year that is fantastic: access to  our pre-registration webinar with editors Aimee Friedman and Caroline Abbey!

Michelle: Bonus webinar! Prizes! Yippee! Now that everyone’s excited, tell us how to sign up!

KLSS: Signing up is very easy! All you have to do is go to this link !

We also encourage everyone to check out our blog www.nerdychickswrite.com. For those who are new to Kidlit Summer School, we want you to know that you can still check out the author posts from the past summers. We keep this content up so the blog can continue to be a learning resource for writers.

Michelle: Thank you, ladies! Can’t wait to spend my summer with you and to meet up with  writing friends at recess! Off to pack my book bag!

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Kami Kinard is the author of The Boy Problem (Scholastic, 2014) and The Boy Project (Scholastic, 2012), which is being newly released in paperback July 2016 as part of Scholastic’s WISH series. Her poetry, stories, articles, and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals for children and adults. A former public educator, Kami remains dedicated to teaching. In addition to her professional critiquing services, she is a SCBWI mentor, and often leads writing workshops at conferences and in schools. You can visit her at  www.kamikinard.com or at www.NerdyChicksRule.com where she blogs with Sudipta.

Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen is an award-winning children’s book author whose books include Duck Duck Moose (a CBC Children’s Choice Award Finalist), Tyrannosaurus Wrecks (a Junior Library Guild Selection), Orangutangled, and Chicks Run Wild. She in the founder of Kidlit Writing School and frequently speaks about the craft of writing at schools and conferences all around the world. You can learn more about her and her books on her website www.sudipta.com or at her blog www.NerdyChicksRule.com where she blogs with Kami.

Michelle Leonard is a chocolate biscotti baker, a math/science nerd, and a middle-grade fiction and nonfiction writer. Connect with her on Twitter:  @MGYABookJunkie.