YA Author Coffee Klatch

Something my fellow library friends and I have been doing regularly for the last several years is YALSA's YA Author Coffee Klatch.  It's usually held on Sunday morning, and it's like author speed dating.  You sit at a table and every two or three minutes a whistle is blown and a different author sits down with you to chat about their latest books and answer questions.

Last year the Klatch started almost 15 minutes late, and the authors had five minutes at the table.  This year things ran much more smoothly, and authors had less time at the tables but it allowed us to talk to many more authors.  I liked the shorter amount of time, actually.  I thought things ran very well this year.

ALA 2011 Annual Conference: NEW ORLEANS!!!

Who's got eight thumbs and is going to New Orleans? WE DO!!!!

There's only a few more days until the four of us are going down to the conference and having a fabulous time in New Orleans. We're very excited. Bring on the speakers, book cart drills, and ARCs. Especially the ARCs.

Heads up! If you or someone you know is going, make sure that you stop by the YALSA Tabletalks on Sunday from 4-5:30pm. Arianna and I are going to be doing a presentation on graphic novels for girls. It's called "Beyond Wonder Woman: Great Graphic Novels for Girls." I think we're going to try and get someone to record us, so we'll try and post it on here at some point.

Anyways, try to check us out. There's a couple other great sounding presentations going on. We'll be in the Marriott at Convention Center, in the Blaine-Kern Room from 4:00 pm-5:30 pm on Sunday. I wonder if they know what they'll be getting themselves into?

Table Talk at ALA Annual Conference

Back in October, Anna and I applied for a place in YALSA's table talk session for the ALA Annual Conference this summer.  A table talk is a full length conference session comprised of several mini-session designed "to introduce teen librarians to new, engaging and timely topics of interest."  We just found out today that we got accepted!  Our table talk will be on great graphic novels for girls, so now you know why we've been reading so many lately!  We're very excited about this opportunity, as it's our first official library talk thingy.  We don't have a whole lot of details yet.  Right now we're just excited, which I'm sure will soon fade into a "we better start getting organized" feeling.  But for right now, huzzah!