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On the Cusp: Writing the Middle Grade Novel for ages 9-13

How to create complex characters, compelling plots, and resonant themes for readers balanced between young childhood and adolescence.

Middle grade is wonderfully rich territory, its characters (and readers) balanced between young childhood and adolescence. This hands-on, generative session offers the chance to take a deeper dive into your middle grade work-in-progress, or to make a start on that novel you’ve been thinking about for so long. Participants will work on creating complex characters, compelling plots, and resonant themes, and explore braiding these three elements into stories. Tricia will share her own process, as well as great mentor texts, both classic and brand new.

There will be ample time to write during the first half of the afternoon. During the second half, Tricia will facilitate a workshop with critiquing and sharing. If you have a middle grade novel in progress, please bring a page to share with the group. 

Tricia Springstubb is the author of work for kids of all ages: picture books, chapter book series, and middle grade novels. Readers' Digest named her newest picture book, Khalil and Mr. Hagerty and the Backyard Treasures, one of the 100 best books for kids ever written (really!). In a starred review, Kirkus described her middle grade novel The Most Perfect Thing in the Universe as "a perfect thing in the world of children's literature." Her newest middle grade, Looking for True, has been called "Because of Wynn-Dixie for a new generation." A frequent presenter at schools, libraries and conferences, Tricia lives in Cleveland Heights.