Sydney Writers' Festival :: All Day YA
June 19, 2017Ok, so this was nearly a month ago now, but it was so AMAZING that I'm still raving about it.
The Sydney Writers' Festival was held at the end of May, and included a whole day dedicated to celebrating Young Adult books - All Day YA.
The event included panels and interviews with authors - my friend Madeleine and I saw the following panels:
- Love Oz YA Anthology: Begin, End, Begin
- Keeping Company: Characters Across a Series
- More Than Meets the Eye: Diversity in YA Fiction
- Defying Expectations: How Do Female Writers Defy Stereotypes
And also the TeenCon 2017 session (where publishers pitched some of their upcoming or recent releases - there were games and it was so much fun! and had free books!)
I came home with quite a few new books - as well as the freebies from TeenCon they had books for sale and I picked up a couple to get signed by they authors.
It really was such an incredible day - definitely worth the 5am bus trip to Sydney! I mean, I knew that we have some amazing YA authors here in Australia, but I was just blown away by how well they connected with the audience during the panels - especially the Q&A - and the time they spent chatting and signing autographs. It was exciting for me now, and I know it just would have meant the absolute world to me as a teen/young adult. Seeing all those young people getting excited about books together and meeting authors they look up to really made me feel all fuzzy (and kind of makes me sound like an old lady haha).
The program is still online here - if you are after some fantastic Australian YA reads please go and check out the authors who were involved! I'll be reading more of their books and will definitely let you know here when I do. =)
xo Bron
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