Two former Writing for Children and Young Adults graduate students find success in the publishing world

B. Sharise Moore, who specialized in WCYA while pursuing her master’s degree from McDaniel’s Innovations in Teaching and Learning (formerly Curriculum and Instruction) graduate program, says she has known since the second grade that she wanted to be a writer when she became frustrated by a lack of characters that looked like her. Her debut fantasy novel, “Dr. Marvellus Djinn’s Odd Scholars,” was just released at the end of May and was published by MVMedia. She is signed to Fuse Literary agency and partner agent, Laurie McLean. 

Moore describes “Dr. Marvellus Djinn’s Odd Scholars” as Octavia Butler’s “Kindred” meets Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” The story follows four African American teens in the 1920s who compete in a variety of competitions to earn a chance to be the first to visit an amusement park, Dr. Marvellus Djinn’s Motherland Park.

She edited and polished the first 45 pages of the novel during the Writing Workshop class and says feedback from the workshop fueled its completion. She then submitted the novel in verse, about half complete, for critique in the WCYA Fiction Writing Novels course. 

“I love the writing community that the Writing for Children and Young Adults program creates,” she says, explaining that knowledgeable and experienced staff – professors Mona Kerby and Daphne Benedis-Grab – make the community possible. “All the classes had the perfect balance of writing, analysis, discussion, and study of the craft.  

“The classes were extremely inviting, the feedback helpful, and we quickly became one another’s cheerleaders.” 

Moore, who is a writer/educator with Uptown Stories, a nonprofit based in New York City, is also an accomplished poet and an acquiring editor at Fiyah Literary magazine, which features stories by and about Black people of the African diaspora.

Jared Reck, who completed coursework in WCYA and currently teaches as an online adjunct lecturer in the program, has had “Donuts and Other Proclamations of Love” published with Knopf Books for Young Readers by Penguin Random House.

Described as an “alternately funny and heartbreaking contemporary story about food trucks, festivals, and first loves,” “Donuts and Other Proclamations of Love” is Reck’s second young adult novel. He is also the author of “A Short History of the Girl Next Door,” which landed him a six-figure deal as a first-time author from publisher Knopf. Read more.

Reck, who grew up in Hanover, Pa., and still teaches for Pennsylvania’s Spring Grove School District, says he fell in love with the young adult genre alongside his students and that he wouldn’t be a writer if he hadn’t first been a teacher. He also credits McDaniel’s WCYA program and in particular the feedback that he received from other students in the program as “hugely rewarding” and said that the classes also helped him figure out how to end his first novel.