Teen Book Fest Wrap Up!

Tricia Morrison
May 21, 2017
4 min read

So I've been back in the 315 for a little over three hours, now, and I've already been busy. I was expecting a nice, quiet evening. But, you know, it never seems to work out that way.

But I'm at my laptop now, and I'm gonna write my wrap up blog post that I promised.

So, last night Ryann and I headed out to the 518, and we got there just in time to have dinner at Uno's and watch the last hour of Anderson Cooper.

Today, we woke up and headed out to the TBF, and it was amazing.

We were going to go to two sessions and then Renee Ahdieh's panel with Sarah J Maas, but we ended up spending so much time at the book store and in the gym purchasing books that we missed the first session and were late for the second one.

We also spent a lot of time exploring the area of Nazareth College that we were in, and it's BEAUTIFUL. I'm kind of regretting that I didn't go to school there, then I remember that if I had gone there I would have been $100k in debt.

We found the Library, that is way better than the one at the college we went to, and was so beautiful. I actually would have spent time studying there if I had gone to Naz for school. Oh well.

There was a beautiful stained glass window in the Study Area (and yes, in the picture below that is David Levithan peeking out in the right corner by the window) of Jesus. Naz is a Catholic/Christian college, so there was a lot of religious regalia everywhere and it made me so happy. But it was also made clear all over the campus that it was a safe space for all genders, races, religions, and sexualities which I also thought was cool. Anyway, back to the story.

So we got lunch, and then we went to a Writing Workshop that they did at 12:30.

I really enjoyed it because they gave us prompts at the beginning and we got free time to write. I'm actually thinking of starting a Wordpress of my writings and dabbles, just because of what I was writing today. A couple of them were really good.

Then they had us listen to music without lyrics, and one of the things I wrote was this seriously cheesy one, the other I kind of just wrote a prompt for, and the third one I just didn't care enough about.

By the time we were done with that, it was time for Renee and Sarah's panel, but I didn't end up going because I really wanted to get Renee's autograph, and have time to skip over to the library to get David Levithan's autograph too, so I waited in Renee's autograph line. Sarah J Maas's line was ridiculous.

Renee was super sweet, and she really brought it down to a normal, relatable level, which I really enjoyed and appreciated. Everyone got a sticky note with their names on it so she had the spelling right, and she asked everyone "Are you so and so," and then said "it's so nice to see you".

And then I told her that I read her books in two days, and that I didn't order them at the same time, but didn't want to stop reading them so I found a PDF online and kept reading until like, 4am when I had to be at work at 6.

Also, she complimented my shirt. NBD.

It was my TWLOHA shirt, and it got me a TON of compliments today so I was really excited about it. I picked it out specifically to show my "hipster with a message" side, and it worked and people really liked it and responded well to it which made me really happy. Because Love really is the most powerful force on the planet, especially in a time filled with so much fear and hatred in every day culture, life and rhetoric. Anyway. I'm on a tangent.

Then she made it even more relatable by saying that we're all "just lying to ourselves" when we find a sequel and say we're only going to read "the first chapter" and then we're reading until the sun comes up. Then our five minutes was over, and it was Ryann's turn.

Ryann was wearing her Lord of the Rings scarf that I got her for Christmas, and Renee super fangirled with Ryann about Tolkien, and I think it was Ryann's dream come true?

Then I ran to the Library to get my book signed by David Levithan.

So while I was in the library, the line was looped between the shelves, which gave me an opportunity to find great non fiction books to read. All about music, which is my other favourite thing.

When I finally got up to him, he too complimented my shirt and I told him how excited I was when Another Day came out, and he told me there's going to be a sequel, which shook my whole life. And he was also excited that I had a first edition of the hard cover because he got to do his "favourite thing" and it was signing it like this:

Which is really, really cool. I was really excited about it. And I'm super excited about the sequel, and the fact that he just said it so casually was crazy.

The only thing that annoyed me was that I saw so many copies of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which is a great book but I feel like a lot of teenagers only found out about him because he wrote that book with John Green.

His books are so good. Everyone should read them.

The only thing that I found really annoying was that it seemed like a lot of people only bought the books to get them signed. Which, again, is fine, but like. I only brought books I had already read.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend. 10/10, would recommend, and I'm definitely going to remember it for next year!