Tuesday, August 23, 2011

YALLFest brings top YA authors to town

Updated with YALLFest schedule and YA Smackdown info! 

YA Superstars Descend on Charleston




Here at the library, our hearts are beating super fast. Why? We've learned which bestselling YA authors are coming to Charleston in November for YALLFest 2011! Thanks to Beautiful Creatures authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, the list includes such megastars as Ellen Hopkins, David Levithan, Heather Brewer, and Melissa de la Cruz.


Major thanks to Jonathan Sanchez of Blue Bicycle Books, who is hosting the event!

CCPL is thrilled to be a partner...check out the FULL SCHEDULE HERE!



Here's the gist: On Sat., Nov. 12, Blue Bicycle Books on King Street will host a FREE all-day extravaganza! Feed your YA-loving brain cells with seven hourly panels, each with three different authors. Also check out author readings, book signings, live music, prizes and a vendor's bizarre (visit CCPL's table there)!

Just how talented are these writers? End the day at a YA SmackDown. Teams (Team Dystopia, Team Supernatural, Team Southern Gothic, etc.) will compete in storytelling games. This event will require $5 tickets.


Now, start reading the authors' books! Click on titles to reserve them at a CCPL branch.







Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Books: Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, and Beautiful Chaos (due out Oct. 18...click on title to put it on hold now!)

Kami and Margaret (call her Margie) have come to Charleston before to speak at schools and to meet lots of us. You'll love their Gothic fantasies set in a fictional small town outside of...yep, Charleston! Watch for Margie's new series, Icons, coming out in 2013. Check out both authors' blogs here.





Ellen Hopkins

Books: Crank, Glass, Burned, Identical, Impulse, Tricks, and Perfect (new!)

Major applause for the author who's shown teens that poetry didn't stop being relevant back when George Washington defied a king. Ellen Hopkins' verse touches today's teenagers with stories about drug addiction, family dysfunction, and the universal quest for love.





David Levithan

Books: Every You, Every Me (new!!); Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; The Lover’s Dictionary; Love is the Higher Law; Dash & Lily's Book of Dares; How They Met, and Other StoriesNaomi and Ely's No Kiss List; Wide AwakeAre We There Yet?; The Realm of Possibility; and Boy Meets Boy

David Levithan, author and editor extraordinaire, brings us amazing stories about relationships and sexuality, especially with strong gay characters. His books break out of stereotypes and mental boxes -- and he's supposed to be a super nice guy to boot.





Carrie Ryan

Books: The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Dead-Tossed Waves, The Dark and Hollow Places

Carrie Ryan is a native of Greenville, S.C., our favorite Upstate sister city! How did this queen of zombie fiction get started? At Duke Law School, she met her future husband, JP, a fellow writer who taught her all about true love -- and convinced her to see a zombie movie. His next trick? He got her to write her first zombie book. We're sure glad he did!






Melissa de la Cruz

Books: The Au Pairs series (start with The Au Pairs), the Blue Bloods series (start with Blue Bloods), The Ashleys series, and Witches of East End (an adult book)

Along with writing teen bestsellers, Melissa de la Cruz has worked as a fashion and beauty editor and has appeared on TV shows as a trend expert. She even writes great adult fiction. (Drag your parents to meet her, too!)





Andrea Cremer

Books: Nightshade and Wolfsbane (new!)

Andrea Cremer has always loved writing. But she only recently plunged into the deep end of the pool that is professional novel writing. When she’s not writing, Andrea is a professor of history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. We want to know if she's as awesomely strong-willed as her main character, Calla!





Heather Brewer

Books: (The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series) Eighth Grade Bites, Ninth Grade Slays, Tenth Grade Bleeds, Eleventh Grade Burns, and Twelfth Grade Kills. Check out her new series: The Slayer Chronicles: First Kill

Heather Brewer wasn't a typical teen. She wore black, danced under full moons, and devoured books. She hasn’t changed much. You'll still find her writing in black Happy Bunny jammies! Follow her hilarious blog here.






Sarah Rees Brennan

Books: The Demon's Lexicon, The Demon's Covenant, and The Demon's Surrender

Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland where you'd find her reading books under her desk in class. After college, she lived briefly in New York and survived her habit of hitching lifts in fire engines. She began working on The Demon’s Lexicon while studying in Surrey, England.




Adele Griffin

Books: The Julian Game, Where I Want to Be, Amandine, Dive, and tons of children's books

Adele Griffin, two-time National Book Award finalist, likes writing YA stories set during summer vacation, a time (in her own memory, at least) of bad jobs, new friends, and sometimes an intriguing stranger. 





Diana Peterfreund

Books: Rampant, Ascendent, Rites of Spring, Under the Rose, Secret Society Girl

Diana has been a costume designer, cover model, and food critic. She graduated from Yale University with degrees in Literature and Geology, which her family claimed would only come in handy if she wrote books about rocks. Instead, she writes books that rock!


 
 
Natalie Standiford
 
Books: Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters and How to Say Good-Bye in Robot
 
Natalie not only writes great books, but she also plays bass in a band of YA authors called Tiger Beat (with Libba Bray, Dan Ehrenhaft and Barney Miller). She started out writing children's books and has written her way up the grade ladder to teens!






Caitlin Kittredge

Books: The Iron Thorn, Bone Gods, Street Magic

Caitlin started writing novels at age 13. As an adult, she tried to be a screenwriter, a comic book writer, and author of copious amounts of fanfiction. Then, she tried to write a novel again. Thankfully, she got the idea of a werewolf who fights crime...






Kimberly Derting

Books: The Body Finder, Desires of the Dead, and The Pledge (due out Nov. 15...click on title to put it on hold now!)

Kimberly Derting fell in love with writing when she signed up for journalism as a 7th-grade elective. It was supposed to an easy A. Instead, it became her passion. She moved on to copy editor of the high school yearbook so she could correct other people’s mistakes and fill in when they missed deadlines. The rest is...well, you know.





Beth Revis

Books: Across the Universe

Beth Revis tried really hard in school to like boring books by dead European guys, but she kept drifting to the YA aisles in the bookstore. (She does like Shakespeare but only for the dirty jokes.) When she became a teacher herself, she filled her classes with Greek gods, samurai, and ancient monsters -- and continued her own writing.






Pseudonymous Bosch

Books: The Name of this Book is Secret, If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late, This Book is Not Good For You

Not much is known about Pseudonymous Bosch other than that he has a passionate love of chocolate and cheese and an equally passionate hatred of mayonnaise. Rumors of Boschian sightings are as frequent (and reliable) as reports of alien abductions. We hope to learn more at YALLFest...





Michelle Hodkin

Book: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
At 16, Charleston's very own Michelle Hodkin lost the rights to her soul in a poker game with pirates just south of Natchez. Shortly thereafter, she joined an acting troupe and traveled the world performing feats of wonder and mischief before writing her first novel.





Katie Crouch

Books: Magnolia League, Girls in Trucks, Men and Dogs

When this Charleston native was growing up, her babysitter often spoke of Hoodoo. She might have even practiced it. Leaving salt by the door, burying the hair left in the comb, decorating graves -- that sort of thing. It aroused Katie's interest in the Gullah culture of the Sea Islands. Proof is in her first YA book, which is set in Savannah.





Books: Warm Bodies

Isaac Marion has worked a variety of weird jobs like delivering deathbeds to hospice patients and supervising parental visits for foster kids. Check out his new zombie book, Warm Bodies (endorsed by Stephenie Meyer). It's being adapted into a movie by Summit Entertainment. Filming starts in mid-September.







Saundra Mitchell

Books: Shadowed Summer, The Vespertine, and The Springsweet (due out in 2012)

Sure, this Carolina neighbor writes great books and short stories. But did you know she's also a longtime screenwriter? For almost 15 years, she was the sole screenwriter for Fresh Films and Girls in the Director’s Chair short film series.





Kaleb Nation

Books: Bran Hambric series: The Farfield Curse and The Specter Key

Kaleb Nation defines personality. Maybe it says enough that he launched a blog giving chapter-by-chapter insight from a guy’s perspective on the Twilight books. He also started YouTube.com/KalebNation. You'll bust out reading his blog here. Then, come meet the guy in person. He'll be moderating the YA Smackdown!






Holly Goldberg Sloan

Books: I’ll Be There

You know Holly from her film credits, which include writing and directing the Disney film The Big Green and writing and producing Angels in the Outfield. She also was the screenwriter of Steve Irwin’s feature film The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course. Her debut novel was released this spring.







Victoria Schwab

Books: The Near Witch

Victoria is the product of a British mother, a Beverly Hills father, and a Southern upbringing. In college, she changed course six times (and would have done it a seventh, but her family and advisors said she couldn’t switch majors in her last semester). Today, she's a writer who just released her first novel.








Kwame Alexander

Books: Crush: Love Poems, And Then You Know: New and Selected Poems, Dancing Naked on the Floor

Kwame is founding director of Book-in-a-Day, which inspires teenagers to write their own books. He's also a poet who has written 14 books and has owned publishing companies, directed plays, written an episode of Hip Hop Harry, recorded a CD, produced jazz and book festivals, hosted a weekly radio show, worked for the U.S. government, and taught high school…




Check back often for YALLFest updates!

4 comments:

  1. Can I repost this on SCASL.net? I am one of the blog contributors.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Cathy - Yes, you certainly may repost. Thanks for helping spread the word!

    ReplyDelete
  3. We are spreading the word, too. We are very excited about meeting these authors!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for helping spread the word! Great post!! -Blue Bike

    ReplyDelete