Deepening the Craft at a Writing Barn Intensive

By the time you read this, I’ll have returned from my first semester residency at Hogwartian Vermont College of Fine Arts, and I’ll be settling back into writerly life at my most magical place on earth – home. Each time someone here at the Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA program asks where home is, I proudly claim “the burgeoning artist’s colony known as… Austin!”

This usually elicits a couple of laughs and statements of longing for the rumored writer’s utopia. The truth is, just south of the Colorado River, you’ll find a windy dirt road behind a cattle guard. Go slowly past the mama deer and her fawns, follow the lighting bugs, and when you see the twinkling lights of the porch, you’ll know. It’s not a rumor after all. You’ve arrived at The Writing Barn.

After I finished my first Writing Barn Picture Book class with the lovely Carmen Oliver in Winter 2018, I knew I wanted to attend the Complete Picture Book Intensive at the Writing Barn. Imagine my surprise when, after submitting my application and fee, I realized I’d accidentally signed up for the Picture Book Biography weekend intensive. I spent the next days fretting over my mistake and wondering how could I ever possibly write a picture book biography in time to submit a piece for critique. Yet while watching my son at the ballpark, a story that I had held onto years began to emerge.

I made a few phone calls, and within a week, I was riding shotgun to San Antonio to visit with Dorothy Lucas, an interview subject from my eighth-grade research project whose story I still had trouble shaking two decades later. I recorded an interview with 95-year-old Dorothy and spent that summer researching and writing a draft that detailed the time she spent during World War II in the elite, groundbreaking, all-female military assistance outfit: the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). 

I arrived at The Barn in September for the intensive feeling nervous but quickly realized that my worrying was unfounded. The culture that Bethany Hegedus and her staff have created at The Writing Barn is tirelessly inclusive, supportive, and nurturing. I was surrounded by writers of all abilities. Some were published, some were contracted, a few were agented, a few were award-winning, and some were just like me – not a claim to our literary names, except for our love of story.

Faculty author, the incredibly smart and endlessly talented Patricia Valdez (Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor) critiqued my piece. She offered me encouragement, thoughtful commentary, and helped me see weaknesses and strengths in my work that I couldn’t find. I spent an entire afternoon on the writing porch doing even more research and performing a major surgical revision to my work. I read it in front of my fellow attendees and faculty superstar literary agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin of Trident Media, who I loved chatting with throughout the weekend about our similarly aged children and our love for podcasts. 

I left the intensive weekend inspired and ready to fly for my biography subject. I continued to revise that piece while hiking through Big Sur with my husband on our tenth wedding anniversary trip. On some sandy trailhead, and despite hardly any cell signal, an email came in from Bethany offering all of the attendees of the biography weekend a discount to attend the upcoming picture book intensive. Yes – the one I’d meant to sign up for in the first place. My ever-supportive husband, Greg, pushed me to capitalize on my momentum, and I grabbed one of the last remaining spots. In the interim, I queried Alyssa with my piece about Dorothy the WWII aviator and kept working on new projects.

When the Complete Picture Book intensive came around, I was jazzed to meet new writers and industry pros: editor Tamar Brazis from Viking, author/illustrator Evan Turk, and podcast-master-librarian-positivity-machine, Matthew Winner. I learned so much about craft and myself that weekend. I spent writing time working on my biography after being inspired by lectures, and I especially enjoyed getting to know editor Tamar Brazis. Over meals and unstructured social time, we talked about our mutual love for swimming, and Tamar mentioned that she liked the voice in the piece I read aloud. Just before I headed home, I connected with Tamar one last time. I told her how grateful I was to have met her, and she asked me to tell her a bit more about my aviator biography project that she had heard me mention. She seemed interested in my writing and my story, and I was psyched! You know that Indiana Jones feeling when you’re pushing the boulder and it just won’t budge… but then… that huge mountain of a rock – impossibly –  begins to move?

While I waited to receive instructions on how to submit my work directly to Tamar, I emailed Alyssa to ask if she’d had a chance to read my work. I let her know that I’d met Tamar and she seemed interested in my writing. It wasn’t long before I’d heard back. Alyssa felt my writing was stronger than when she had heard me read aloud at The Writing Barn, and we scheduled the call.

I pinch myself every day that Alyssa is my literary agent. She is transparent, professional, honest, not afraid to try the unconventional, and is an expert negotiator. We sold The Brave Life of Dorothy Lucas to Tamar Brazis at Viking, and Tamar landed the enormously talented Brooke Smart (my top choice!) to illustrate. The story of Dorothy’s incredible life has been aching to be told and celebrated since the 1940s. It’s been living inside of my heart since the late 1990s. I am so grateful to announce that, thanks to the common vision and effort of so many, Dorothy’s brave story will be accessible to children in Spring 2022.

The Writing Barn facilitated all of this. The fact that I got a chance to meet and know my agent and editor personally before entering into a professional relationship with them is a huge privilege. So much of the connecting that happens in the publishing industry seems like getting lucky at a shot in the dark. The Writing Barn personalized my path to becoming agented and published in a way that seems positively magical.

If you’re wondering where you might find some sprinkles of writerly inspiration in your own journey, I’d point you beyond that cattle guard and down the windy dirt path. Under the oaks there’s an old horse barn filled up to the top with love and support and everything you need to make your very own magic. 

More about Meghan:

Meghan P. Browne is a native Austinite with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Arizona where she was the four-time recipient of the Foundations Scholarship and a varsity letter winner in swimming. She lives on ten acres in far southwest Austin with her husband and their three children, manages the Honey Browne Farm apiary, and wants to be an Alice Rumphius/Aldo Leopold hybrid when she grows up.