EVENTS Writing for Children: Diversity and Inclusion

Left to right: Onie Tibbet, Yvonne Banham, Az dassu, Sally Polson, Julie Farrell. Image description: Onie has bobbed, brown hair, white skin, and is wearing a black top with orange flowers, and blue jeans. Yvonne is white with bobbed blonde hair, is wearing a rust-orange blouse, blue jeans and floral print brougues. Az has brown skin, is wearing a red and white headscarf, and a pale blue denim maxi-dress, with white trainers. Sally is white with a dark brown bob, wears a navy t-shirt and cropped trousers and white trainers. Julie is white with long, wavy red hair, round blue glasses and is wearing a dark blue denim jumpsuit and sparkly trainers. She is gesticulating to the panel. They sit in a white, wood-panelled room, on velvet purple chairs. Photo credit: Sarah Broadley

How do you make children's literature more diverse and inclusive? Elizabeth Frattaroli reports on a SCBWI Scotland event at Edinburgh International Book Festival.

On the 28th of August Elizabeth Frattaroli attended a Scottish SCBWI event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival hosted by one of the current network organisers, Onie Tibbett, and former network organiser and soon to be debut author, Yvonne Banham, whose book, The Dark and Dangerous Gifts of Delores Mackenzie, will be published by Firefly next year.

The panel was completed by A M Dassu, award winning author of Boy, Everywhere and Fight Back, and Director of Inclusive Minds, a unique organisation for people who are passionate about inclusion, diversity, equality, and accessibility in children’s literature; Julie Farrell, author, award winning poet and co-founder of The Inklusion Guide, ‘A kickass guide to making literature events accessible to deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people’, which had been launched at the book festival earlier that week (and can be downloaded online); and Sally Polson, Editorial Director at Floris Books, who has commissioned and edited books across many genres.