Monday, April 30th Chat Session with Greg Neri
2:15-3:10 (3:15-4:10pm EST)
**THIS SESSION CHAT HAS ENDED.**
Three moves
is all it takes
to change the outcome
of the game.
In Marcus’s world, battles are fought everyday–on the street, at home, and in school. Angered by his sister’s death and his father’s departure, and pushed to the brink by a bullying classmate, Marcus fights back with his fists.
One punch away from being kicked out of school and his home, Marcus encounters a mysterious chess master named CM who challenges him to fight his battles on the chess board. Marcus resists, until he hits rock bottom, and begins a journey, with CM’s help, to regain control of his life.
Inspired by recent chess enrichment programs in inner-city schools, Chess Rumble explores the ability of a strategic game to empower young people with the tools they need to anticipate their moves through life’s many challenges.
Chess RumbleComing in Fall of ‘07.
About G. Neri
I am a storyteller, filmmaker, artist, and digital media producer. When I was in college, I made an animated film with jazz legend Chick Corea called
A Picasso on the Beach, which became a student Academy Award finalist and aired on HBO and Bravo for seven years. After that, I decided to become a filmmaker for real, and I wrote, produced, and directed my first independent feature film called A Weekend with Barbara und Ingrid. It opened in my favorite theater in Hollywood. Unfortunately, it also opened on the day of the Northridge earthquake of ‘94, making its release rather short.
I’ve taught animation and storytelling to inner city teens in Los Angeles with the ground-breaking group Animaction, producing over 300 films dealing with issues like teen violence, gangs, and drugs. I also co-directed the documentary Fa’a Samoa which followed a 15-year-old Samoan gangbanger through the mean streets of Los Angeles.
From 1993-2003, I helped pioneer the internet business, as head of production in two highly successful new media companies whose clients ranged from Disney, Mercedes, and Motorola to Microsoft, Reebok, and General Motors. In this time, I was also one of the founding members of the Truth teen anti-smoking campaign.
In 1999, I started writing and illustrating for kids, but it wasn’t until I started writing for teens that things started to happen. Now, my first two teen books for Lee and Low, Yummy and Chess Rumble, will make their debuts in 2007. I’ve just finished a YA novel called Surf Mules, about two high school surfers who get summer jobs as drug runners. And now I have an agent and a long list of projects to create. I couldn’t ask for more.
I’m currently living in Tampa, Florida with my wife and daughter, where I’m focusing on writing and watching alligators.
Tall, freckled, gawky seventh-grader Annemarie Wilcox (whose family calls her Shug) has a beautiful, popular older sister; a gorgeous, alcoholic mother who doesn’t fit in their small Georgia town; and a father who’s always away on business. She also has a huge crush on Mark, the neighborhood boy who has always been her best friend. As the school year starts, Shug must deal with Mark’s rejection, her parents’ bitter fights, and a falling out with her closest girlfriend. Han’s well-crafted first novel captures the aching hurt of exclusion in middle school, and the acute pain of vicious teasing. Shug’s direct, honest narration reveals a wholly believable, endearing, hot-tempered young woman who faces painful truths and survives. Shug and Celia are named for characters in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Han references that novel with fine effect. It’s her skill in evoking colors, tastes, scents, and touch that really stands out, as Shug steps away from childhood and into adolescence, with all her senses ablaze
). You name it, it could be found if not in Berkeley, then across the bridge in San Francisco.
When your mother walks out on you, you can’t stand your dad’s new girlfriend, and boys are (almost) nothing but trouble, sixteen’s not so sweet.
