Karen Cushman
Newbery award-winning children’s book author
If you have a craving for Stuffed Swan’s Neck, Porpoise Pudding, or Live Frog and Turtle Pie, those and other yummy-sounding medieval recipes can be found in The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black or Fabulous Feasts by Madeleine Pelner Cosman. Or see medievalcookery.com or godecookery.com for links to lots of others. When it’s autumn, I think apples—from a cookbook of 1290 called The Forme
It’s autumn at my house. The colors are splendid. But here’s the bad news … It’s much too lovely a day for raking leaves. Think I’ll go in and read… Except someone is in my chair. Sigh.
“I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. “So the
After a long, sometimes difficult summer, the rains are back and so am I. When it starts to rain, Otis spends a long time looking out at the backyard, trying to decide whether or not to lick the dirty water off the paving stones instead of drinking fresh, clean water from his
We just returned from visiting my brother and his wife who live near Ashland, Oregon. They drove us to see magnificent vineyards ringed by mountains. And we went to the animal shelter where he volunteers (a lot) to see the dogs waiting and waiting for someone to take them home. If you can have a dog, please consider adopting one from
We have had daily visits from a very pregnant deer. I can’t get a better picture for she runs away if I get too close, but I can see the knobs and angles of a fawn inside. The deer on the island can be destructive to plants and flowers, but I won’t shoo this one away. Let her eat
Here’s a crummy picture of an amazing group of writers at the Oregon SCBWI conference in Portland last weekend. All 201 of them were full of questions, ideas, and enthusiasm, and they welcomed me most warmly. I hope their passion is contagious as I once again dig into the draft of my new book.
Not yet traditionally published? Over 50? SCBWI members can apply next year for a Work-in-Progress grant and have your manuscript considered for the Karen and Philip Cushman Late Bloomer Award, $500 and a scholarship to one SCBWI conference. This award was established to encourage and celebrate late bloomers like me, who didn’t start to write until age fifty. But then
Philip and I were just in Minnesota where I spoke at the Spotlight on Books Conference. Here’s a view out our window of April in northern Minnesota. The conference was fun and the snow was lovely. Afterwards we were driven to Minneapolis where the splendid Margi Preus (Heart of a Samurai and Shadow on the Mountain) invited us to sit
We were just in Portland with our daughter, Leah. My science-nerd daughter took us to see a presentation on insects to celebrate her birthday. Here are some of the beauties. Makes me glad I don’t live in the tropics. It does not make me want to write about bugs. I’ll leave that to Jane Yolen and Jason Stemple. I hear
