Due to my mentor's availability, my on-site internship with the i.d.e.a. museum won't begin until the coming Wednesday. In the meantime, I've had plenty to do as Young Authors of Arizona prepares for the regional Scholastic Writing Awards ceremony and the publication of our second anthology!

On February 2nd, we announced the 2015 regional writing honorees on our website. Since then, we've been in discussions to select pieces for publication from hundreds of award-winning works. Soon, we'll be contacting authors, connecting them with mentor-editors who will help them to edit and polish their works. I'll be serving as a mentor-editor in the Poetry category, and I'm excited to work with other writers!

While our title's still a secret, I've narrowed down three options for the anthology's cover from dozens of award-winning entries in the Arizona Scholastic Art Awards. When I contact soon-to-be-published authors, I'll be including a poll so the writers can help to choose the cover themselves.

As we head into spring, the YAA Board has been discussing different outreach strategies. Among our ideas are a state catalog analogous to the national catalogs published by Scholastic each year, a platform for students to share and comment on writing, and previewing unpublished writing on our blog. I've yet to pilot any of these ideas, but there certainly is a wide range of possibilities, and any input or feedback from my readers is appreciated!