Welcome the to 16th Annual Pinkorama!

It’s the Pinkorama’s Sweet Sixteen!  Can you believe that we’ve been making these Peep creations for sixteen years now (a bona fide teenager!) or that the Pink Carnation series turned twenty-one last month?  It’s a sobering thing when a series you wrote what feels like a couple of years ago is now old enough to drive.

I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that it’s been twenty-one years of Pink Carnation– and sixteen of sugary fun!

How marvelous is it that a random impulse sixteen years ago– “Hey!  Does anyone feel like making a Pink Carnation-themed diorama out of Peeps?”– has turned into over a dozen years of brilliant works of Peep created by you!

Every year, I assume that this year’s Pinkoramas (aka Pink Carnation Peep Dioramas) can’t possibly be as impressive as last year’s– and every year they somehow reach new heights of peepfection.  Last year we had Carla and Rowan’s charming Peepicorn, the Yale Swim team gone wild in Candace and Cassandra’s brilliant recreation of a Yale dining hall in “2 Peeps”, and my daughter’s shameless misuse of a crocheted Peep and an Alexander Hamilton doll in “The Girl from Peepwich Street”.

I can’t wait to see what this year’s will be!

So without further ado… the 2026 Pinkorama!

The rules are simple: using those sugary, marshmallowy goodies (Peeps), recreate your favorite scene from any one of my books, novellas, or short stories.

There are the Pink books, for Napoleonic Peeps; The Summer Country, for Barbados peeps; The English Wife, for Gilded Age Peep (so much gold sugar!); The Ashford Affair, in case you feel like going Edwardian Peep, 1920s Peep, or Kenya Peep; That Summer, for Victorian Peep and Pre-Raphaelite Peep (or Dorrington Descendant Peep); The Other Daughter, for Bright Young Peeps; The Forgotten Room, for New York Peeps throughout the ages;  The Glass Ocean, for doomed ocean liner Peeps (or Star Wars memorabilia bedroom modern Peeps);  All The Ways We Said Goodbye, for various eras of Paris Ritz Peeps; The Lost Summers of Newport, for glamorous Newport Peeps; Band of Sisters, for Smithie Peeps in the Somme (Smithpeeps?);  Two Wars and A Wedding for Smithpeeps engaging in archaeology or nursing in various wars (Teddy Roosepeep, anyone?); and, most recently, pantaboot-wearing Peeps from The Author’s Guide to Murder (or kilted Peeps and sheeps!) or Alexander Hamilpeep from The Girl from Greenwich Peep.

Two L (disillusioned law student Peep), “A Night at Northanger” (ghost hunter Peep), and “The Record Set Right” (World War I or modern Peep) are also fair ga65me.

Once your Peep creation is complete, take a picture (or pictures) of your Pinkorama and email them to me at willig@post.harvard.edu with “Pinkorama” in the subject line.

The deadline for the Pinkorama is Monday, May 11. Starting on Wednesday, May 13, I’ll post all the Pinkoramas here on the website, one per day, and then open it up to general voting.

As for the prize….

The runners up will receive a hardcover copy of their choice of The Girl from Greenwich Street or The Author’s Guide to Murder.

The winner will receive an ARC of my upcoming book What Happens at Nightfall, as soon as I have an ARC to send (I have been promised there will be ARCs by then!).

If you’re seeking Peep inspiration, check out 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020‘s, 2019‘s, 2018‘s, 2017’s, or 2016’s peeptastic entries!

Let the sugary fun begin!