With that noted, last night I had the honor to sit next to Ellen Oh, editor of Flying Lessons and Other Stories from the We Need Diverse Books movement. There's more to the story to come, but I just wanted to acknowledge this fact here: I was able to be in her gracious, brilliant, creative, and forward-thinking presence when I was seated directly next to her at last nights Penguin Random House dinner (so delicious...such wonderful company).
I wanted to talk about tomorrow, and all the potential possibilities of more diverse books, but instead, I talked about how incredible her edited collection of short stories has been from CWP-Fairfield. This summer, 4 stellar educators worked with 26 amazing, diverse kids to discuss the short stories in this collection. Project Citizen: Flying Lessons From the Prose was our two-week National Writing Project Institute and we are all better because of it. The kids went solo in their writing, but also produced amazing, collaborative work. The two weeks was packed, and we're still processing how incredible the experience was.
So, I am writing this brief post (because I'm exhausted) simply as a marker of a much overdue larger post that will detail what we accomplished. This morning, however, I'm just in awe I got to meet the writer and change-agent, but even more astounded that someone chose to sit me next to her at a dinner (what were they thinking?).
There's more to come. I am too tired to write, but there's so much to celebrate. For now, a photo will suffice. If this was Ellen Oh's blog, she might have written, Ellen Uh-Oh, they placed me by Crandall.
Ha! Here's to friendship, collaboration, and dreams!
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