Promoting Yorkshire Authors

 

Suggestions for 2026 for the Children's Author Group (CAG)

The CAG group met by ZOOM on 15th January 2026, primarily to discuss ideas for the programme for 2026. 

The ideas from the group are listed here and the CAG will meet again on Thursday 19th February 2026 at 2.30pm to consider producing a children's story book addressing reluctant readers, typically boys 8+. 

We're hoping that Jane Clack can give us the benefit of her experience in this area either in person or by providing notes or an audio transcript of her ideas.

Here are a list of ideas discussed, in no particular order:

• Supportive sessions for Children's writers along the lines of PYA's Writers Support Group but aimed at children's authors.
• The CAG work on a communal project, to be decided (and it could be one of the items identified in this list).
• Prepare a schedule for the year's meetings with topics for each one so that people know what is coming up.
• A session on best practices for accommodating Autistic/ADHD/Dyslexic/etc readers and perhaps broaden this to best practices to make reading accessible to all children.
• Audio books - how to produce them, possibly creating an audio version of the anthology 'I Want a Crocodile and Make it Snappy' with authors reading their and possibly other's chapters (if an author feels unable to read theirs).
• Create a blog posting to recommend resources available to children's writers (and other genres).
• A session on illustrating and illustrators.
• Create a communally produced book aimed at reluctant readers. A suggestion was made to create a 'world' (a school, village, region, sci-fi or fantasy world, magical world, etc) populated with strong characters and each chapter giving the viewpoint of a different character and written by a different CAG member.