~ CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
~ WRITING WORKSHOPS
~ LIBRARY PROGRAMS
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SCHOOL VISITS
The 2025 American Library Association Children’s Literature Legacy Award honors WINC's Carole Boston Weatherford. Her award-winning works include "Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre," which won the Coretta Scott King Author Award in 2022, and "BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom," recipient of the Newbery Medal Honor in 2021, among others. Congratulations, Carole!
In Memorium
Billie Hurmence
1921-2024
Belinda Hurmence papers UNCC
TO OUR READERS:
WE, the members at Writers & Illustrators of North Carolina, respect all of our readers of every race, religion or gender identity.
WINC is fiercely committed to tolerance, inclusiveness and equal civil rights for everyone. As author-citizens of North Carolina our members will, as we have always done, strive to write and illustrate exceptional and inspiring books for all young people. We will continue to talk with our constituency about books of all kinds in libraries, schools, bookstores and other venues. We will carry on writing, illustrating and speaking about the timeless themes of children’s literature, among them justice, fairness, love and liberty. The Latin root of the word liberty, liber, meaning free, is, after all, also the word for book.
North Carolina is our home and we want it to be a place where the rights of all are protected and everyone is welcome.
The Members of WINC
Many WINC members were proud signatories of this Declaration in Support of Children, created by The Brown Bookshelf. Read it here.
A Few WINC Favorite Quotations
You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children."
~ Pablo Casals, cellist
"Children’s literature is a place of great experimentation. Like children themselves, it can be hilariously playful and deeply serious. It isn’t content to sit on shelves and behave. It is inquisitive, exploratory – and difficult to categorise. It tells tales of rabbits and ducks, of vampires and zombies, of ordinary kids in ordinary homes, of love and death, and explores the most profound, joyful and troubling aspects of human experience. It experiments with narrative and form, with the shape of the page and the shape of the book. It is where literary culture is constantly renewed. We overlook this world at our peril. It is, and always will be, at the heart of our cultural life." ~ David Almond
"A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming. ~ Madeleine L'Engle
“My purpose is to create a mirror for the reader to see themselves, to create a light for people to see themselves in the characters, pictures, and stories. So they resonate.” —Kadir Nelson
"Years ago someone said to me, 'Jackson,
your books must be printed on scar tissue.' I was pleased. ~ Richard Jackson, children's book editor
and publisher
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” --Toni Morrison
"Children may be fiends in all kinds of ways, but they
are not hypocrites. If you remember, it was a child who cut
through all the pretence and pointed out that the Emperor had
no clothes on." ~ Joan Aiken
