Get to Know Your Mentors 2021: Curtis Manley (Nonfiction)

The submission window for the 2021–2022 SCBWI WWA Mentorship Program is now underway! Between now and July 30, we’ll be sharing interviews with each of our just-right mentors to help prospective mentees get to know them better. Learn more about the mentorship program, including how to apply, here.

What are the best parts about being an author?

I most enjoy working with an idea (one I came up with, or one suggested to me) and figuring out what kind of shape that idea might have as a book. What would it encompass? How should it begin? How should it end? How could its structure reflect or enhance the content? What kind of voice would be best for the text?

And tangled up with those questions would be the research needed to answer them and to steer the main text and enlighten the backmatter. I love researching a topic and learning new things I can then explain as clearly as possible. Sometimes I spend more time on the research than I probably should, but that’s how I ended up with a book like Just Right: Searching for the Goldilocks Planet.

What does being a successful published professional look like to you?

Being able to create the stories I want to tell and illuminate the topics I find intriguing. Which isn’t to say all my projects are snapped up by editors. I get rejections often—but I’m okay with that, since the only way to completely avoid rejection is to stop submitting one’s work.

What can a mentee expect from your mentorship?

Just the right advice so they can see how their manuscript can best tell the story they want to, some resources to guide them with this project and those in the future, and an experience that helps them become comfortable with working with an editor.

I like to mentor because . . .

I remember the feeling of stumbling in the dark when I first began writing for children. I was not even part of a writing group at that time, so even if I had known what questions I should ask, I had no idea who could begin to answer them. I like the idea that I can now assist someone else get a running start with their writing project, answer questions about creating children’s books, and offer relevant lessons I’ve learned. Plus, it’s fun to watch someone else’s project come into focus and find its shape—especially if I can do a bit to help guide the process.

What are you reading?

Right now I’m primarily reading reference books for a project I’m finishing up. Last year, though, I was a judge for the SCBWI’s Golden Kite Awards in nonfiction. I received 160 books across the two categories (picture books for younger readers, and books for middle-grade and young-adult readers). There were so many great books that it was hard to pick just five finalists for each category. But there were also books with missteps that left me scratching my head because a crucial fact was left out, a beloved family member was never mentioned again, or the story’s historical setting was intentionally made opaque for no apparent reason . . .

What’s the writing advice you give most often?

For writers who have a story they want to tell but know nothing more about the publishing industry, I urge them to join SCBWI and attend the meetings and conferences in their area. That will put them in touch with many helpful people. But you know that already.

I also urge writers to become part of a critique group; no matter how well you might write, your critique partners will help you improve—and you can help them.

And please please please write down your story and character ideas, and do it immediately. You don’t want to remember that you had a brilliant idea yesterday—but now have absolutely no memory of what the idea actually was about. Don’t ask me how I know this.

What are you working on these days?

Shhh! It’s a secret. But my next project might be a nonfiction picture-book biography of a scientist. Or a middle-grade nonfiction book about a cross-disciplinary STEM topic. Or maybe a different idea will grab my interest tomorrow . . .

What’s your next book, and when will it appear?

The Rescuer of Tiny Creatures will be out June 8, 2021. It is a fictional picture book—with nonfiction elements—about a girl who cares for the insects and other small creatures that don’t seem to be appreciated by anyone else she knows. But when there’s an invasion of tiny creatures in her classroom, she knows how to save the day.

book cover the rescuer of Tiny Creatures

Curtis Manley’s fiction and nonfiction picture books are informed by his background in poetry, science (geology), the tech industry, and technical writing and editing. Just Right: Searching for the Goldilocks Planet, his nonfiction picture book about exoplanets, won an SCBWI Golden Kite Honor and the Science Communication Award from the American Institute of Physics. He also mixes factual elements into his fictional stories, helping create picture books that entertain while making the universe a little more understandable. Curtis grew up in Pennsylvania and now lives near Seattle, WA, with his wife, their daughter, and a cat. Visit Curtis’s website at curtismanley.com, and find him on Facebook.

Brought to you by Suma Subramaniam and Jenny Tynes, SCBWI WWA Mentorship Program, and Dolores Andral, Pen & Story

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