{"id":301,"date":"2018-12-31T11:39:54","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=301"},"modified":"2018-12-31T11:39:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:39:54","slug":"around-the-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"AROUND THE TOWN"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Texas Teen Book Festival draws record crowd in Austin<\/h1>\n

Story and photos by Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>The seventh annual Texas Teen Book Festival<\/span> was held Sept. 26 at St. Edward\u2019s University in Austin. One of the largest teen book festivals in the country (organizers expected close to 5,000 attendees), this year\u2019s was the biggest event in the festival\u2019s history, with nine panels, a game show, writing workshops, several noted speakers, and book signings all day long.<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/span>More than thirty authors were in attendance. One of the university\u2019s gymnasiums was given over to exhibitors, such as Penguin Teen, Macmillan, and the Writers\u2019 League of Texas, and BookPeople was on hand selling books for signing by young adult authors. Numerous school districts provided buses to take their students to the festival, some from as far away as Louisiana. New to the 2015 festival was a writing contest for children aged 11 to 18, sponsored by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children\u2019s Books. Three winners were announced, each winning a cash prize of $150 and a full editorial review by Delacorte.<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/span>The Star Wars Throwdown Game Show kicked off the day\u2019s events. Contestant authors, divided into Light Side and the Dark Side, competed for best light saber pose and participated in a trivia contest with \u201cTaboo\u201d-like rules while Darth Vader and his minions looked on. Austin\u2019s Badgerdog was on location offering writing workshops. Carrie Fountain,<\/span> St. Edward\u2019s University\u2019s writer-in-residence, taught poetry, and Callie Collins, <\/span>co-founder of Austin\u2019s A Strange Object publishing house, taught fiction.<\/p>\n

The keynote speaker was Sonia Manzano,<\/span> better known as \u201cMaria\u201d from Sesame Street. She discussed and read from her new memoir, Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx,<\/span> stressing that children need to see people on television who look like they do and that books are importance because in today\u2019s schools education equals testing and books may be the one place where there is no single correct answer.<\/p>\n

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The \u201cNo Risk, No Reward\u201d panel was moderated by Texas\u2019s own Lindsey Lane,<\/span> author of Evidence of Things Not Seen.<\/span> Jesse Andrews<\/span> (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl<\/span>), David Levithan<\/span> (Another Day<\/span>), Cindy Pon<\/span> (Serpentine<\/span>), and Carrie Ryan<\/span> (Daughter of Deep Silence<\/span>) read from their newest novels and talked about the nature of risk and the risks they take in their writing. It turned into a fascinating discussion of the risks inherent in YA literature, in coming-of-age stories, and reached the general conclusion among the panelists that subject matter termed \u201cdark\u201d or \u201cedgy\u201d usually means it\u2019s real. They emphasized the need to write about the real so we can read and know we\u2019re not alone. When the floor opened for questions this panel was particularly generous with their advice to budding writers and reassurances that first drafts are supposed to be terrible.<\/p>\n

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South Austin\u2019s own Griffin Mauser<\/span> (whose motto is \u201cBeige is a state of mind\u201d), poet and artist, moderated the \u201cDrawing between the Lines\u201d graphic panel. Chad Nichols,<\/span> Michener Center for Writers alum, screenwriter, and co-author of the Intergalactic Nemesis<\/span> series, moderated the \u201cReel Food for Thought\u201d panel. Dr. Sara Villanueva,<\/span> on faculty at St. Edward\u2019s, discussed and signed her new book, The Angst of Adolescence: How to Parent Your Teen and Live to Laugh About It.<\/span><\/p>\n

Texas author Jenny Martin<\/span> (Tracked<\/span>) took part in a \u201cFreshman Fifteens\u201d panel on how writers become authors, and the science fiction \u201cFuture Possible?\u201d panel. The \u201cFuture Possible?\u201d panel was moderated by Shawn Mauser,<\/span> librarian at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders. Jenny Martin was joined on this panel by fellow Texas writer Sophie Jordan<\/span> (Unleashed<\/span>), Pierce Brown<\/span> (The Red Rising Trilogy<\/span>), Claudia Gray<\/span> (Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars<\/span>), and Rick Yancey<\/span> (The Fifth Wave<\/span>). This boisterous panel came to the conclusion that writers are schizophrenic (Yancey spoke of a \u201cfugue\u201d state when he\u2019s really into his writing), but treatment is unnecessary since writing is therapy. When the floor was opened the young readers attending this panel asked some particularly astute questions about process and characterization and were rewarded with thoughtful answers.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>During my day at the Texas Teen Book Festival I kept coming back to the same Phillip Pullman<\/span> quote. \u201cThere are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children\u2019s book.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Texas Teen Book Festival draws record crowd in Austin Story and photos by Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor The seventh annual Texas Teen Book Festival was held Sept. 26 at St. Edward\u2019s University in Austin. One of the largest teen book festivals in the country (organizers expected close to 5,000 attendees), this year\u2019s was the biggest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}