81-Year-Old Award-Winning Playwright Vies for a Spot on “The Gittle List”

SAN DIEGO - Nov. 1, 2014 - PRLog -- Diane Purdy-Theriault turned one of her plays, The Bedraggled Dragon, into a children’s picture book. She learned that writing the book was the easier part. “Trying to market my book has been more difficult than I imagined. I had a great first year, and then I was hit with a shock—a six artery by-pass due to a heart attack.”

Diane is now doing well and raring to go. She says, “I’m back to being myself again, but I lost the momentum.” Finding ways to market her self-published children’s picture book has been challenging. Then she learned about The Gittle List contest on LinkedIn. She told Aviva Gittle, owner of Aviva Gittle Publishing and host of the contest, “Very sweet of you to do something like that for we writers who self-published.”

Diane won the National Children’s Playwright of the Year, Santa Fe, NM for Kisso the Bear Meets the Princesses! She says, "The adults pick three plays and then give them to the cast members of their children’s theatre to choose from. For the first time in the theatre’s history, every child picked [the same] play. It was very exciting.”

Aviva is thrilled that Diane entered her book in The Gittle List contest. “This is our first award-winning playwright to enter. I’m really looking forward to reading Diane’s book.”

Diane hopes to win a spot in The Gittle List Top 10 for 2014. But, she already received high praise for The Bedraggled Dragon from a very important person: her ten-year-old grandson. He told Diane, “Grammy, this isn’t a picture book. This is a good book with pictures.” She is hoping that Aviva Gittle enjoys the book as much as her grandson.

The Gittle List is an annual contest exclusively for self-published authors of children’s picture books and is open to authors around the world. Visit the Aviva Gittle Publishing website at http://gotogittle.com/ to see the 2014 submission guidelines and the 2013 Gittle List winners. Submissions are accepted digitally or in print, but must be emailed or postmarked by November 30, 2014.

Aviva Gittle Publishing writes and publishes stories for children in English and Spanish. Aviva’s website,  http://gotogittle.com/, shares the stories of authors, illustrators and others who create books and creative media for children.