As the SCBWI 50^th Anniversary Summer Conference gets underway, I want to acknowledge the crisis of confidence and belonging SCBWI is going through.

It’s a crisis that has led to there not being a team blog reporting on this conference, and to there not being an LGBTQ+ social. Those are both personal highlights and staples of the New York- and Los Angeles-based international conferences for more than a decade now, and I’m saddened by their absence. At the same time, it is the right decision – I will not put others, or myself, in situations that feel unsafe.

I believe in the people who make up our community of children’s literature. They – YOU – are some of the best people I know.

There’s much to fix, and heal, and I believe that participating in the conference, engaged with the community and what we all love – creating books for kids and teens – is progress towards a future vision of SCBWI truly being a place where every person of color, every Black person, every Indigenous person, every disabled person, every LGBTQ+ person, everyone of every gender and religion and ethnic background and nationality — every one of us, including the ones who didn’t feel comfortable being part of this conference this summer — is empowered and knows they belong.

As a friend of mine put it recently, “It’s okay to demand more from the things we love.”

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee