Jude Mandell
Jude is an SCBWI Work-In-Progress-Grant Letter of Merit Winner, the recipient of a Golden Heart Award from Romance Writers of America, and First Prize Winner for Picture Book Manuscript in the 2016 SCBWI-Florida Rising Kite Contest.
Her writing credits include contributions to prose and poetry collections with Knopf, Scholastic, Meadowbrook Press, and Lee & Low; a middle grade sports biography for Enslow, as well as other traditionally published works. Her holiday stories on DVD for Clearvue/SVE are available online through the Discovery Channel Store.
Jude's writing has received positive notice from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, The Horn Book, and other respected print and online book reviewers.
Jude keeps busy writing picture books, early chapter books, and poetry, refining completed manuscripts so they’re market ready. Her most recent published work appears in LULLABY AND KISSES SWEET: Poems to Love with Your Baby (Abrams Appleseed, 2015), MANGER, a 2014 Christmas poetry anthology (Eerdmans), and AMAZING FACES (Lee and Low, 2011), all edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins.
Jude’s in-progress YA verse novel BUSTED, was jury selected by Sierra Nevada SCBWI’s Mentorship Program, providing her the chance to work one-on-one with noted authors Susan Hart Lindquist and Ellen Hopkins. Her YA project BULLY WARS was an SCBWI Work-In-Progress-Grant Letter of Merit Winner.
Jude has also performed and co-developed improv material for Chicago’s Second City Children’s Theater, and was invited to be a jury member judging in the category of Animated Short Films for the 32nd Annual Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, whose winners are potential contenders at this year's Oscars.
She has a M.Ed. in Special Education from Penn State University, and spent twenty-five-plus years programming for, and teaching, special needs and general education students.
She’s an enthusiastic visiting author, providing workshops and interactive assemblies for public and parochial school populations of varied ages. You can visit her at www.judemandell.com