Dear Ones, Take it from this bibliophile/ school librarian: Veera Hiranandani’s book, The Night Diary, needs to be one of your next-reads. This 2019 Newbery Honor Award winning book is set during a tumultuous time in India’s history, told through letters written by a girl to her deceased mother. I found it powerful and moving, as did […]
Dear Ones, Last month, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program announced the creation of the L’Engle/Rahman Prize for Mentorship. As part of that program’s month-long reading series, the September 16th event featured the performance of the prize-winning writers’ works, and also a dramatic dialogue I arranged from the letters Madeleine exchanged with Ahmad Rahman […]
Madeleine insisted, “The largest job of the artist is to listen to the work.” This listening is one of the ways, she believed, that we become co-creators with God. But, practically speaking, what does it mean to listen to what the work is trying to express or be? How do artists in various mediums allow […]
For many of her readers, Madeleine’s exploration of the inner life both fed their understanding of different traditions and prompted deeper self-reflection. It’s why when some of us read her work, we’re often underlining long passages, nodding, yes, I feel that, too. We’re creating space for more of those yes, I feel that, too moments at […]
Bibliophiles love a good “to read” list, and we will not disappoint you now. As part of our prep for “Walking on Water: The Madeleine L’Engle Conference” this November, conference co-director Sarah Arthur has curated a list of books you’ll want to add to your stack, post haste. The list is categorized by genre – […]
Author Karuna Riazi has been a fan of Madeleine L’Engle since she was an 8-year-old reading A Wrinkle in Time. That love for Wrinkle and its protagonist, Meg Murry, brings Karuna to the first Walking on Water Conference this fall (yay!). She’s part of the stellar panel of We Need Diverse Books authors who’ll be […]
This week, we’re excited to get to know Sayantani DasGupta, a panelist on the We Need Diverse Books panel, which will be featured at the Walking on Water Conference this November. Writers associated with We Need Diverse Books will talk about “The New Generation of Meg Murrys – What Fantasy & Speculative Fiction Inspire,” and will […]
This November’s Madeleine L’Engle event — the inaugural Walking on Water Conference — won’t merely a retrospective and celebration of Madeleine. Instead, organizers have a vision that the conference would also look ahead, amplifying and empowering artists and writers for a new generation. Enter We Need Diverse Books, a grassroots nonprofit of children’s book lovers who […]
Madeleine said that artists, like children, are good believers. She also denied that writing for children was any different from writing for grownups (a perspective that came up recently during Children’s Book Week). The techniques of fiction are the techniques of fiction. They hold as true for Beatrix Potter as they do for Fyodor Dostoyevsky. […]
When I saw A Wrinkle in Time on stage this spring, I was blown away by the ability of the performers and director to keep the truth of the story while staying true to their medium. I constantly wondered, though: How on earth did they adapt this book so well? We’re thrilled to have a […]