Speaking

Kirsten Cappy of Curious City is available to talk about children’s book marketing and literacy engagement projects with both small groups and conferences.

She also is available at conferences for one-on-one author, illustrator, or publisher marketing consults.  Contact her for details.

“On behalf of the entire Prairie Writer’s and Illustrator’s Day committee, I thank you for your stellar presentation! Those concrete examples you provided covered an amazing amount of PR/Marketing ground. You’re a genius!  Thanks for your expertise, your enthusiasm, and your generosity…we’d recommend you highly for other conferences” —Sara Shacter, SCBWI-IL

 

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

5/17/18
New Hampshire Library Association
Henniker, NH

“The true meeting takes place when the book opens, and a stranger reads about — and comprehends — a stranger.” –Author Amit Majmudar

How do we create a culture of welcoming for immigrants, refugees, and 1st-3rd generation Americans? I’m Your Neighbor promotes the use of children’s literature featuring “new arrival” communities to engage readers of all ages in a discussion of commonalities and differences. The database of titles (ImYourNeighborBooks.org) has been used by libraries since 2012 for collection development and programming. This past year, a curated collection of I’m Your Neighbor picture books has been touring the state of Maine. Called the Welcoming Library, the collection comes with embedded discussion questions and a display unit to engage patrons in cultural conversations. We will explore the highly rated pilot program and the possibility of a larger national conversation.

6/23/18
Diversity Fair
American Library Association Conference
New Orleans, LA

The “I’m Your Neighbor Welcoming Library” (IYNWL ) is a traveling collection of 25+ picture books which feature the immigrant, refugee or “new arrival” experience. Given the national conversation about immigration, the IYNWL seeks to raise awareness and build sensitivity for all ages through children’s literature. Each book has a sticker with “I’m Your Neighbor” in 10 languages on the cover. The end papers have inserted individualized discussion questions about commonalities, differences, and community. The collection, its portable display unit, reader survey, and other resource materials provide a school or library with ready-to-go programming and teaching opportunities. To lift the financial barrier to reading and sharing these important books, IYNWL is designed to be grant funded and then to travel between schools and libraries at no cost (or only transportation cost). Discover how you can create a community of welcoming by hosting and/or engaging with this collection.

6/10/18 – 6/14/18
EMLA Agent Retreat
Seattle, WA

PAST APPEARANCES

4/26/18
Reading Round-up
Augusta, ME

I’m Your Neighbor  Welcoming Library
The “I’m Your Neighbor Welcoming Library” is a traveling collection of 25 picture books which feature the immigrant, refugee or “new arrival” experience. The collection, its portable shelving and the accompanying resource materials provide a school or library with ready-to-go programming and teaching opportunities. Discover how you can create a community of welcoming by hosting and engaging with this collection.

11/6/17
Southern Maine Community College
South Portland, ME

I’m Your Neighbor: The Immigrant Community Celebrated in Literature
Immigrants often find themselves in a unfamiliar culture and community. Long-term citizens often find themselves struggling to meet and know their new neighbors. I’m Your Neighbor is a project that introduces neighbors through books. Reading about home cultures or about immigrant lives can make an immigrant feel seen. Reading about an immigrant’s home culture or about life in America can make an older citizen feel connected. Kirsten Cappy of I’m Your Neighbor will share the new multicultural children’s books that feature our Maine neighbors. Books will be available for sale.

4/24/17
Southern Maine Community College
South Portland, ME

I’m Your Neighbor: The Immigrant Community Celebrated in Literature
Immigrants often find themselves in a unfamiliar culture and community. Long-term citizens often find themselves struggling to meet and know their new neighbors. I’m Your Neighbor is a project that introduces neighbors through books. Reading about home cultures or about immigrant lives can make an immigrant feel seen. Reading about an immigrant’s home culture or about life in America can make an older citizen feel connected. Kirsten Cappy of I’m Your Neighbor will share the new multicultural children’s books that feature our Maine neighbors. Books will be available for sale.

4/29/17
SCBWI Michigan
Via Skype

Building a Community of Readers
As SCBWI members, you have formed a crucial community of writers. While fellow writers and your editorial team can share in your creative process, you can often feel alone and unequipped when it comes to marketing. Using examples from authors and illustrators, Kirsten Cappy of Curious City will share how publication creates the opportunity to form an entire new community – one of advocates and readers. Focusing on the mission of your marketing before the “should’s” of marketing, Curious City will help you envision story-based marketing solutions as unique as your book.

5/4/17 – 5/9/17
EMLA Agent Retreat
Brandon, VT

3/5/17
3:00 PM
PRINT Bookstore
Portland, ME

I’m Your Neighbor: Supporting the Immigrant Community with Children’s Books
Print’s neighbor, Kirsten Cappy of Curious City will book talk children’s books that celebrate the current immigrant experience.  Customers will have the opportunity to purchase any of the featured books for donation to Portland Public Schools.  Let’s support Portland’s culture of welcoming!  Can’t make it, but want to support immigrant books in schools?  Call or stop by and buy a gift certificate for “I’m Your Neighbor.”

02/25/17
Marketing Boot Camp
Sponsored by SCBWI Austin
Via Skype

Kirsten Cappy is the queen of out-of-the-box marketing, and in this presentation, she’ll share how to create discovery for your books by engaging children, educators and librarians beyond the page.

11/05/16
Prairie Writer’s & Illustrator’s Day 2016

Wojcik Conference Center, Harper College
Palatine, IL

5/5/16-5/9/16
EMLA Agent Retreat

6/12/16
New England SCBWI PAL Workshop
Mount Wachusett Community College (Leominster Campus)

Building a Community of Readers & Advocates
As you develop your work, you build a crucial community of fellow writers through local connections, conferences and online forums. After publication, that community needs to widen to readers and those that advocate for readers. How will you engage readers and the educators, librarians, parents and other advocates who put books in their hands? Kirsten Cappy of marketing firm Curious City will share examples of children’s literature community building and lead a series of exercises that explores mission, audience, advocates, engagement and discovery. Participants should bring a published or forthcoming book that they would like to explore these themes with. This will be a working session and laptops (or internet-connected devices) are highly encouraged.

Marketing Tool Time
Looking through the lens of mission, audience, advocates, engagement and discovery, we will have a conversation about marketing tools. Few need a 101 on social media, blogging, newsletters, media, print materials and the like. We all need, however, a filter to stop the endless flow of potential marketing to do’s. Participants are encouraged to email questions

7/12/15-7/17/15
EMLA Agent Retreat

8/11/15
Austin SCBWI
Webinar

Marketing Story
Following the abundant advice for self-promotion can leave an author or illustrator feeling scattered or concerned about impact.  Using examples of creative marketing strategies implemented by her children’s book marketing firm, Curious City, Kirsten Cappy will demonstrate how book promotion can be both as unique as the story created and enduring.  Together the group will develop a marketing campaign for a forthcoming picture book.

6/21/15
10:30 AM -12:00 PM
Lesley University Picture Book Seminar
Marran Theater
Lesley University
Mellon Street, Cambridge, MA
Sponsored by the MFA in Creative Writing

You’re an Open Book
While the world of writers, illustrators and publishers focus on the craft of the picture book, others must facilitate the discovery of and engagement with the final product.  From parks to parades to pediatricians (and other peculiar occasions and locations), Kirsten Cappy of the children’s literature marketing firm Curious City will talk about the role of picture books in childhood and the role of picture book creators in opening books for children.

12:00-1:30 PM
Everything You Always Wanted to Know
Composed of three picture book authors (Lesley MFA mentors, David Elliott, Susan Goodman, and Michelle Knudsen, who in a previous life worked as an editor) and children’s literature marketing specialist, Kirsten Cappy, this panel should be able to answer just about any question you might have about the writing, production, and selling of picture books.

6/27/15
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM
2015 ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco, CA.
Moscone Convention Center – 3001 (West Building)
With Anne Sibley O’Brien

New Immigrants, New Approaches
With continuous news stories and rhetoric about “illegal” immigrants and “Islamification” of the Western world, how you change the conversation about “new arrivals” and welcome our diverse neighbors into the library community?  This workshop will present research demonstrating the power of diverse books to reduce prejudice, guidelines and programming models for sharing diverse immigrant stories with communities, book lists, and other resources.

3/27/14 – 3/29/14
Whispering Pines Writers’ Retreat
West Greenwich, Rhode Island

4/10/14
Reading Round Up
Augusta, Maine

I’m Your Neighbor: Celebrating “New Mainers” with Books & Programming
Kirsten Cappy & Anne Sibley O’Brien will present the deep rewards and challenges around sharing books and hosting programming featuring Maine’s new immigrant communities. In partnership with the Portland Public Library, they ran a year long, community-wide read of Maine-based “new arrival” picture books, novels, and biography collections.  From henna to Hip Hop, each book was celebrated with inclusive, culturally relevant, and reproducible programming.

5/18/14-5/22/14
EMLA Agent Retreat
Brandon, VT

5/3/13-5/5/13
Wild Wild Midwest
2013 SCBWI Multi-State Conference
Fort Wayne, IN

All Hat and No Cattle
Children’s Book Marketing in Today’s Wild, Wild West
Following the abundant advice for self-promotion can leave an author or illustrator feeling like their outreach is “all hat and no cattle” or lacking a certain substance or impact.  Using examples of unique marketing strategies creating by her children’s book marketing company, Curious City, Kirsten Cappy will demonstrate how  book promotion can be as unique as the story created and as comfortable as an old pair of boots.

Speak Your Mind, But Ride a Fast Horse
Rework Your Online Presence with WordPress
Author and illustrators should be completely in control of their online presence (not waiting for their brother-in-law to update content) and able to use that online presence to facilitate discovery of their books. This presentation will show how authors and illustrators are successfully using the fast horse of WordPress to speak their mind while demonstrating concepts for staging your online personality, choosing content that interests your reader, and maximizing the tools that WordPress offers.

One-on-One Marketing Consults
Often as published authors and illustrators we are introduced to the tools of self-promotion,  but struggle with what to say and who to say it to.  Published authors and illustrators are invited to schedule time with children’s book marketing consultant Kirsten Cappy of Curious City to brainstorm a marketable theme and target audience for their forthcoming or current title.  Kirsten Cappy will provide to each consultee with a written marketing report, a 50-minute one-on-one consult, and a free 30 minutes follow-up phone consult.

10/6/12
Storytelling in the Digital Age
SCBWI Austin
Austin, TX

Website Liberation With WordPress
Writers should be completely in control of their online presence (not waiting for their brother-in-law to update content) and able to use that online presence to facilitate discovery of their books.  This presentation will show how authors are successfully using WordPress while demonstrating concepts for staging your online personality, choosing content that interests your reader, and maximizing the tools that WordPress makes available.  One random attendee will get a free Curious City Web Consult post-conference.

5/24/12
NECBA Meeting
Sturbridge, MA

Children’s NonFiction – The Principles of Feng Shui and Relativity – Or How to Make it Work
You can google endless articles for authors on how to write nonfiction books for children, and it’s always stated how large and growing the market is, so how can we make that happen in our stores?  Panelists include Yolanda Scott, Charlesbridge; Cythnia Platt, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Kirsten Cappy, Curious City; Sue Carita, Toadstool Bookshop; Deborah Kops, author of The Great Molasses Flood.

5/20/12
Maine Libraries Association
Libraries United Conference
Orno, ME

Bring a Story Walk to your Community
Join Kirsten Cappy of Curious City, Mary Peverada of the Portland Public Library and others as we discuss the creation of StoryWalks at several locations in Portland. The StoryWalk Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, Vermont and developed in collaboration with the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition and Kellogg Hubbard Library. Find out how to bring stories alive in your community – and combine the joy of books, family and being active.

4/30/12
International Reading Association Annual Convention
Chicago, IL

New Neighbors: Using Children’s Books to Build Bridges Between New Arrivals and Long-term Communities
How do we welcome new arrivals in a manner that truly makes room for them in the classroom, school or larger community, particularly when their cultural, language, religious and/or racial identities are unfamiliar to long-term community members? How do we ensure that everyone in the community is engaged and appreciated so that resentment is diminished and learning can flow both ways? Kirsten Cappy of Curious City, author Terry Farish and author-illustrator Anne Sibley O’Brien will share their experience in creating cross-cultural books and events and share models that emphasize connection and commonalities as well as appreciation of differences.  More info.

03/31/12
Maine Festival of the Book
Portland, Maine

Facing Your Inner & Outer Demons: Teen Issues in Paranormal Fiction
Curious City will lead a discussion with Young Adult authors Amalie Howard, Elizabeth Miles, and Sarah L. Thomson on the incorporation of  real life teen issues into paranormal fiction for young readers.

3/10/12
New England Society for Children’s Book Authors & Illustrators
Eric Carle Museum, Amherst, MA

Working with a Book Marketing Consultant
Curious City and their clients Cathryn Falwell and Anne Sibley O’Brien will join Deborah Sloan and Company and her clients to discuss the relationship between a children’s book marketing consultant and a children’s book creator.

3/6/12
Maine College of Art
Portland, ME

Building a Book Cover, Building Characters
Spoke to MECA Illustration students about book jacket and character design for middle grade and young adult fiction while assigning the cover design for the third book in the Sirenz series and character design for the book’s website avatars.

2/17/12-2/20/12
Austin SCBWI Regional Conference
Austin, TX
Children’s Book Marketing small group intensive plus ten individual author/illustrator consults.

11/9/11
Maine College of Art
Portland, ME

Building a Creative Small Business
Spoke with MECA Illustration juniors on how Curious City was envisioned, built, and how the business uses creative marketing solutions to further the work of children’s book creators.

4/2/11-4/3/11
Writer’s League of Texas
Austin, TX
Individual author/illustrator consults.