Heather Bouwman

photo: St. Thomas University

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books and bio

Presentations

Heather Bouwman loves to visit schools and give talks and workshops for kids as well as adults.

For youth, Bouwman can:

• Appear in a traditional “author’s visit”: a short reading followed by a talk about how she wrote and revised her novel; and a Q & A session.

• Lead a hands-on workshop focused on generating ideas for stories. Please feel free to suggest ideas for topics or tie-ins to curriculum, and she will work with them if possible.

• Lead an interactive discussion of writing groups and how to give and receive feedback on your writing. This workshop also focuses on some key concerns in revision. Grade-schoolers (like older folks!) often do not enjoy revision and tend to think of it as remedial (something only bad writers have to do). This workshop aims to show the joy in revision and underscore the idea that good writing is always writing that has been revised.

For adults, Bouwman can talk about various writing-related issues or lead writing workshops. Please feel free to suggest topics. Recent topics she’s talked on include:

• “Writing for Children: One Writer’s Lessons”: H.M. (Heather) Bouwman’s first children’s novel, The Remarkable & Very True Story of Lucy & Snowcap, languished in manuscript form for several years until she figured out what she needed to do to give it its best possible chance at publication. The novel’s jump off the slush pile and into publication is a success story born of equal parts research, hard work, and just plain dumb luck. Bouwman will read from the novel and then talk about ways to move a manuscript out of slush and into an editor’s hands—and ways to keep it there.

• “The Art and Craft of Revision”: Revision is radical and big—much more than simply rereading a manuscript, dotting the i’s, and spell-checking; much more even than rearranging sentences or deleting paragraphs. Revision is the knocking down and rebuilding of entire houses. Bouwman explains how her view of revision changed as she worked on her first novel, and she offers listeners helpful ways to think about revision in their own writing.