Reading and Writing the Picture Book

Join Green Box Artist in Residence and Children’s Author Mk Smith Despres.

The picture book is many things at once: a text, a visual narrative, a shared experience. Picture books have the immense responsibility to reflect the world’s truths and wonders back to children. And sometimes, they’re just about butts. Participants will examine the picture book in all its forms—narrative, poetic, silly, rhyming, wordless, nonfiction, conceptual—and will leave the workshop with a list of manuscript concepts and the beginnings of their own story.

Mk Smith Despres writes, teaches, and reads lots of books with their family in western Massachusetts. They have worked as an educator for over 15 years with kids and adults with disabilities, but also worked as a baker, made a magazine about food and farming, and spent exactly three days milking cows. Mk is the author of several new and forthcoming picture books including Night Song, illustrated by Hyewon Yum, and There’s That Sun Again, illustrated by Julie Benbassat.