I’m psyched to be making the trip west this weekend for YALLWEST, a fantastic festival in Santa Monica featuring some of the best YA authors on the planet. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, I highly recommend stopping on by! It’s free and open to the public aside from a few ticketed events.
There are keynotes featuring the likes of Rainbow Rowell, Sana Amanat, Soman Chainani & Melissa de la Cruz, Matt de la Peña, Jason Reynolds, Marie Lu and Tahereh Mafi, tons of great panels, and fun events like the Smackdown.
I’ll be participating in said Smackdown, I’ll be reading some cringeworthy writing from my teen days (I am completely mentally unprepared to do this and am breaking into a cold sweat just thinking about it), and will be on a panel about outer space. Oh, and I’ll be signing books at 4pm on Sunday.
Check out the fantastic schedule and hope to see you there!
Wish I could participate. EVERYTHING I write is cringeworthy. I'd win first prize in the Least Improved After the Most Years of Trying category. Even if not, would be great to go but impossible for me. Hope everyone has fun.
That sounds like a cool conference.
I show my drawing notebook to my kid every time she complains that her work doesn't look as good as mine. Still, terrible to have to do it in front of people. You should just read some Old Man and the Sea and pretend it's your early writing. You're not trying to turn a profit, just seem like you've always been awesome. I think Ernest would be okay with it.