Denise Vega is the award-winning author of seven books from toddler to teen, including her middle school “blog” books: Click Here (to find out how i survived seventh grade) – a Colorado Book Award winner and Scholastic Book Fair bestselling title – and Access Denied (and other eighth grade error messages). Her other young adult novels are the award-winning Fact of Life #31 and Rock On. Her picture books include If Your Monster Won't Go To Bed (Crystal Kite winner) and Grandmother, Have the Angels Come? illustrated by Erin Eitter Kono (Colorado Book Award winner, Colorado Authors’ League Award, Américas Award Commended Title). Denise has a B.A. in Film & Television from UCLA and a Masters in Education from Harvard University. She is on faculty at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver as well as University College at the University of Denver and teaches classes through the University of Denver’s Enrichment Program where she teaches writing on all categories of children’s books, from picture books through young adult novels.
Mentor Statement
Denise’s approach to mentorship is holistic. She believes in providing guidance that will push both novelists and children’s picture book writers to improve their craft and learn to evaluate their own work with a more discerning eye through questions, examples and suggestions—all designed to support their writing and revision process. She believes in providing feedback that is specific to the program project while noting and discussing how students can apply relevant feedback to future projects. Denise approaches the thesis manuscript through both a macro and micro lens. The macro lens gets students looking at high-level story elements such as the structure of the work, what they are trying to say through that work, storyline and plot, scene purpose and cohesion, character arcs, etc and how these all fit together to form a powerful whole. The micro lens has students evaluating consistency, language use, dialogue and more.
