Children's Literature Lecture: Alumna Author-Illustrator Rebekah Lowell & Author/Editor Frances Gilbert

Description

Children's Literature Lecture by Alumna Author-Illustrator Rebekah Lowell and Author and Editor Frances Gilbert
Monday, July 24, 7:30 pm
Online and Richard Wetherill Visual Arts Center, Room 119
Rebekah Lowell is an author-illustrator and surface pattern designer with a passion for the natural world. As a survivor of domestic abuse, she’s found the natural world to be a peaceful healing ground. Her debut novel in verse, The Road to After, offers a story of healing from trauma, and her debut picture book, Catching Flight, provides hope on the wings of birds. It was released in March 2023 and edited by Frances Gilbert (concurrently a guest speaker at Hollins). When not in her studio, you can find Lowell outside—gardening, nature journaling, birding, and raising butterflies— often with her daughters, who she homeschools. Lowell has a B.F.A. in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. in children’s book writing and illustrating from Hollins. She is represented by Paige Terlip at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

After earning her M.A. in English, Frances Gilbert’s first job in publishing was as a book club editor at Scholastic Canada in Toronto. She moved to New York in 2000 to set up a children’s editorial division at Sterling Publishing, where she stayed until 2012. Gilbert then moved to Random House Children’s Books, where she is vice president, editor-in-chief of Doubleday Books for Young Readers. Titles she has acquired and edited include The New York Times bestseller The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine by Mark Twain, Philip Stead, and Erin Stead; I Don’t Want to Be a Frog by Dev Petty and Mike Boldt; the Happy Hair series by Mechal Renee Roe; and Catching Flight by Hollins alumna Rebekah Lowell (concurrently a guest speaker at Hollins). In addition to editing children’s books, Gilbert also writes them: She is the author of the picture books Can You Hug a Forest?, Go, Girls, Go!, Too Much Slime!, and I Will Always Be Your Bunny in addition to several Step Into Reading titles. You can follow Gilbert on Twitter at @GoGirlsGoBooks, where she posts about children’s writing and editing.

Events will be held in person and simultaneously broadcast by Zoom webinar. They are free and open to the public. To receive webinar links to the series, please email kidlit@hollins.edu.

Sponsored by the graduate program in children’s literature.