Born Behind Bars I'm so excited to share the news that Born Behind Bars is a Junior Library Guild Selection! And it received it's first review - a wonderful STAR - from Kirkus: " This compelling novel develops at a brisk pace, advanced by evocative details and short chapters full of action... A gritty story, filled [...]
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Help India Battle COVID
This weekend was a mixture of joy and grief for me. The joy: #NESCBWI21. I officially accepted my Crystal Kite award at the New England SCBWI conference, presented the closing keynote address, and felt surrounded by the warmth of supportive friends and colleagues. It was a perfect virtual conference experience for me. Yet, through it [...]
Diverse Verse
What a wonderful year for poetry, with Naomi Shihab Nye as our Young People's Poet Laureate, and Amanda Gorman reading aloud the inaugural poem! A personal milestone for me - two of my poems, Undone and Whenever You See a Tree, were published in the March 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine! I said that in [...]
To 2021, With Love…
Wow! Can't believe it's 2 months into 2021 already. I'm trying hard to stay positive, although it's sometimes hard to do so in lieu of the horrific display of violence and white privilege we all witnessed in the United States in early January. Then again, it would be impossible to write a post that doesn't [...]
Poem for the New Year
If you're reading this, healthy 2021 wishes. These days, my more frequently updated blog is the one associated with my website, http://www.padmavenkatraman.com. But as I've done before on this site, I wanted to record and copyright my words - as people have in the past appropriated something I said that they liked and used it [...]
School Visit Season – Virtually!
My school visit season began this September with a marvelous visit to Frederica Academy (virtually, of course)! Unfortunately, my chronic shoulder injury is also acting up, so I may not be able to celebrate every other school visit this fall, as I'll be limiting social media activity a little. Especially as I'm hard at work [...]
The Bridge Home represents RI at the National Book Festival!
The Bridge Home represents RI at the National Book Festival What a busy few months it's been. Not always easy, but certainly busy. I've been writing so many other articles that I haven't had time to write a blog post for a while: an Author's Quarantine Stories post for PW Weeding Out Racism's Invisible Roots [...]
#AuthorsTakeAction moving forward…
Yesterday was amazing. A hashtag that began with one tweet grew into something that, according to this wonderful PW article, "went viral." I actually wasn't paying attention. I'd promised every author that I would respond and amplify their signals and at one point it started coming in really fast, then my ig wouldn't refresh or keep up [...]
#AuthorsTakeAction
Unusual times, unusual measures. I don't usually blog more than once a month, but an idea popped into my head that I can't get rid of. Last week, I heard from a parent and then a teacher, both of whom were speaking about how hard it is for young people to stay home. Yesterday, when [...]
Writing Wednesdays, Meditative Mondays and more…
Thanks so much for visiting my blog! Given what we're facing as a world, I wanted to do my little bit to help out and so, here's what I'm hoping and planning to do: Every week, by Wednesday, I'll be uploading a short writing prompt (in April, as it's national poetry month, these will be [...]