Good news, everyone – I’m headed to television! Bravo is piloting a new reality TV show called Project Publishing, and they’ve asked ME to appear on the panel of judges (which is why they’re allowing me to announce the big news right here)!!!
The format of the show is going to be very much like Project Runway, hence the name. (Though I should point out that the Weinstein Company is the owner of Project Runway, whereas Project Publishing will belong to Bravo and hopefully therefore won’t get caught up in any network tug-of-war.) Each week talented would-be author/illustrators will compete in various writing and illustrating challenges. At the end of each episode they’ll appear before the judges to share their work with us and then (based on our assessment of their work) we’ll decide which contestant will be eliminated that week. This will continue until the final episode, in which one author/illustrator will be selected as the winner and awarded the prize of a big chunk of money plus a contract with a major publisher!
As a big fan of Project Runway and Top Chef, I feel so honored to have been selected to what is an incredibly prestigious panel of judges!! Sitting beside me on the judges’ panel will be Leonard Marcus, Maurice Sendak, and the show’s host, Anita Silvey. (I can’t wait to see what hat Anita picks to wear for the show each week!)
Wait’ll you see the challenges the producers have planned for the contestants! Things like "Anything but the Great Green Room" in which contestants will be asked to reimagine Goodnight Moon in a new setting and illustrate it as a graphic novel, or "Sabuda MacGyver," in which contestants will have to create their own pop-up books using nothing but string and chewing gum. Contestants will be sharing housing in vacant stacks at the New York Public Library.
As for when the show will air, I’m afraid you’ve got a while to wait. We haven’t started taping yet, so it’s going to be many months before you’ll be able to see my smiling face on your TV screens. At this point, the best guess is that you might be able to tune in by this time next year, on APRIL FOOL’S!!!!!!!!!
Oh how I wish this wasn’t a joke! ; )
Oh, Alison, this is so funny. You got me. Seriously, though, now that you’ve put the idea out there, who knows where it may lead?!
oh, wow…i am bummed. so wishing this was real, i’d watch it 7 nights a week!
HOW GOOD WOULD THIS BE???
You TOTALLY had me going until the ‘sharing housing in the stacks’ line. I just kept thinking, WOW – how in the world do I get on this show??? 🙂
:O You’re good, Alison!!! Think about it . . . only unpublished authors &/or author illustrators :~> Now that would be a program 😀
Yeah. You got me, too.
I wish, I wish, I wish this show existed! I would definitely tune in. And I’m sure we could all learn something, no matter what side of the industry we’re on! Joanna K, Annick Press
With all the ridiculous “reality” shows out there, this isn’t all that farfetched. But yeah, you got me good!
If only…
Hook, line and sinker. I’m a reality show junkie. My heart rate went up, up, and up as I read thinking, ‘they REALLY need an ART AGENT as part of that panel.’ LOL!
Oh, man! I’m disappointed on so many fronts….
(sigh) I cannot BELIEVE I feel for that. I was totally eating that up until the last sentence, and even then I had to reread it twice before it sank in: Alison pulled a fast one. Well played. That’s good, since growing up with two prankster brothers has made me very attuned to practical jokes (and a joker myself) and it STILL managed to get by me!
If this show actually existed, I would watch.
Darn – for the first time EVER I was actually planning on watching a reality TV show! How clever this was – you GOT ME for sure! If only it were true…!
Oh, good April Fool! Sabuda MacGyver — wow, that would be something to see.
I was so excited- I’d decided I’d watch it even if it competed with “Good Eats.” I wish, I WISH it was real- I was ready to forward it to my illustrator/author friends. Alas. Great April Fools!
If only this were true. I would so love to be Tim Gunn!
I would so love to be a contestant on this show!
Ha! I’m reading this on April 3 and was totally going for it. Why wouldn’t this be a great reality television show? (I might actually be convinced to follow it regularly, despite my usual non-reality tendencies. *g*)
Fabulous idea. We already work under extreme conditions so this wouldn’t be too far a stretch.
Wowser! Totally good. Now go and propose it to Bravo. Or to High Noon Productions or one of the other independent producers of cable content.
You had me too! I was all ready to forward this to the authors and illustrators on my list. Think what a show like that would do to promote children’s books to the mainstream! It would do for pic books what JK Rowling did for fiction.
@ Anita Silvey They made a Tim Gunn bobblehead. You could have your own bobblehead! It would be your version of the Nancy Pearl action figure. And she’d round out the judge’s panel nicely. You guys should really try to do this in your copious spare time. The barriers to entry have never been lower.
And I am reading this on April 4th, and thinking of friends who might want to compete, and what fun this would be to watch… but one of my good college friends always said, “I may be gullible, but I’m not Janet!”
Oh rats!! This was the first reality show I was going to make sure to record!
Okay – you got me too but this was the first time I’d arrived at your blog so I sort of have an excuse. Now I’m off to have a poke around at whatever else you’ve been blogging about – it all looks pretty useful and interesting to a wannabe famous author like me. Cheers for now Gareth