I am especially proud of my post from Sunday. I worked really hard on that one since I only had about 10 minutes to make a lot of important points about the current state of RA and how it helps with book discovery.
Also, here is the link to American Libraries' coverage of ALA. I know they are still writing recaps because the recap of my Saturday panel is not up yet, but I know pictures were taken and they said they would be covering it. Also while I was writing this post, more articles were added. Links gets everything.
But here is what I did while at ALA with links to my Twitter notes where applicable.
Friday: I began my morning with a wonderful 30 minute walk [each way] to the Hill where I was meeting with a member of my local Congressperson- Daniel Lipinski [IL-3]-- to discuss both the library issues of the entire state of IL and in my town. This meeting was organized with the help of the Illinois Library Association. Our Rep is pro library both in policy and personal life. He is an active library user. But we haven't been able to get him [or staff] to come to local library legislative networking events, so I focused on inviting them to those. I think I was successful, but we will see.
However, because I am a novice at this, I didn't have my picture taken with the staff. Oh well.
Later that day I attended the opening session with Jason Reynolds. He was amazing. Here is the American Libraries recap. And here is the link to my tweets/notes of his talk; I did it all in one thread for easy retrieval. I already adored him, especially after I led a gourd of 6th graders in a book club of As Brave As You, but he did an even better job than I could have imagined both telling us a story and making a point. He is awe inspiring as a story teller.
Saturday I spent the first half of my day shepherding horror author Grady Hendrix around. I met him at 9am at his panel- Reads Like Fiction: Nonfiction You Can't Put Down. Click here to see my notes including every book cover. Again, it is all in one thread.
Then Grady and I headed over to the exhibit hall to hang out in the Penguin booth [Quirk is distributed by PRH and shared their booth] and met up with Steve Thomas so that we could record an episode of his Circulating Ideas podcast about Summer Scares. Here is photographic evidence.
This is a picture of PRH LibraryMarketer Hugo, who I have worked with before. He took it upon himself to make sure we had space to podcast. Ivy from Quirk was busy with another horror author who did not have a librarian friend to help move him along. Thanks again Hugo.
From there, I brought Grady to his panel on the Pop Top Stage in the exhibit hall entitled- Don't be Afraid of Horror. For some reason the thread got broken so you click here first and here second [although with this one you need to scroll to get to the top of the thread. The link to the top cuts off part of the thread; I have no idea why] to read my notes and see all of the book covers. The wifi was bad in that corner, so I am not surprised it is wonky.
I did make this observation after my busy morning:
I had such a wonderful Saturday even before I presented because I got to spend time with Grady and see how much love library workers have for horror. The panel at the Pop Top Stage was very well attended and it filled my heart.
I had to say goodbye to Grady to head to my Saturday panel. Again all the info on my panel is here. We had standing room only and unfortunately had to turn people away. BUT, there will be a recording. So everyone can hear what was said. Yay.
This day kept going however, as I had dinner with Sourcebooks and got to meet two wonderful nonfiction authors, both of whose books you need to read:
- Anne Gardiner Perkins, author of Yale Needs Women
- Nefertiti Austin: Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race Gender and Parenting in America
Not only do their books sound fascinating, the women were both excellent humans. We had lovely conversations over dinner. These are titles that will be in high demand this fall. More on Perkins to come.
I also was seated next to Robert Rosenwald the owner of Poisoned Pen Press which was just bought by Sourcebooks and is also working with the Horror Writers Association to put out the Haunted Library Series. We too had excellent conversation, and I am very excited to be working with him on the HWA projects.
I had to leave the Sourcebooks dinner early for the Carnegie Medal ceremony. You can click here to see coverage of that night of speeches. I took a break from tweeting because as you could see, it had been a long day. I did especially appreciate Kiese Laymon talking about the work we still need to do to make all libraries truly loving places for all. Use this link to see all of the Tweets covering the speeches. Here are the pictures I took of the program so that you can see all of the titles that were being honored, not just the winners, and all speakers:
So that was just the first day and a half and I haven't talked about another dinner and a late night trip to the African American History Museum courtesy of extended Solstice hours that I crammed in there.
On to Sunday, I spent most of the morning getting ready for my talk and going around the exhibit hall.
One thing I did of note in the exhibit hall that morning was to attend a panel on the Pop Top Stage on debut Science Fiction novels moderated by John Scalzi. Click here to see the books that were discussed and authors present. I have to admit I was too tired from prepping all morning to tweet, but all of the books are worth your time. All Tor titles. I enjoyed the conversation very much as the appeal of the genre was discussed at length.
Then it was time for my panel as part of the update on the Panorama Project. Here are the few tweets I did from my seat at the end of the table. But all of the slides and everything I said during my turn are here.
Sunday continued with a few meetings that will lead to announcements in the future, the NoveList contributors Happy Hour [which was fabulous as all of the contributors only get to see each other at conference], dinner with a former colleague, and an evening walk over to the White House.
My final day at ALA was an early start as I went to the LibraryReads Breakfast. My colleague Erin Downey Howerton did a thread for each author/book with a cover photo of the title. Click on title below to read her notes on their speeches:
- Yale Needs Women by Perkins
- Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Fox
- Ninth House by Bardugo
- The World That We Knew by Hoffman
- Moving Forward by Jean-Pierre
And here is a picture of the authors and LibraryReads reps:
I ended my conference with a lunch meeting with the acquisitions editor from ALA Editions to hammer out all of the final details about my contract for the Third Edition of the Horror Book. I can officially say I will be turning it in in September of 2020, so look for it in late Spring 2021!
Overall, this conference was different for me. I spent less time in actual sessions and more time in networking and meeting up with potential clients. The sessions I did attend were mostly because I was involved in some way. And that's okay. As I get further into my career, the networking parts of ALA are more beneficial to me. I started conversations with 6 libraries to come do training in the near future, and touched base with all of the companies I have a free lance relationship. I also got to see friends old and new.
I left tired, but inspired. Next year I hope to see you in Chicago.
But now it is time to start getting back to normal.
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