SundayMorningReads

This may be my last post for a few weeks. ALA Midwinter is on the horizon and for me, it will be all about BFYA. Well, for the most part! I’ll be meeting several people in person who I’ve so far only know online. I have a small list of ARCs to pick up (Please let me know if any you’re aware of that I need to find!) and I’ll begin working with the YALSA Research Committee.

I’m not the only one who is busy these days!

Craig Laurance Gidney (Bereft, Tiny Satchell Press) recently appeared on Gil Roth’s Virtual Memories podcast to talk about his favorite read of 2013. The link is here.

Ayanna Coleman (Associate Manager of Events & Programs as well as the Librarian for the Children’s Book Council) has ventured out and begun a new literary agency.

Quill Shift Literary Agency is a boutique literary agency focusing on finding and promoting great children’s and YA (specifically MG and YA) books featuring engrossing settings and diverse characters. The cool thing about Quill Shift is that not only is it open to authors submitting their manuscripts, it’s looking for readers to participate in helping choose the books represented by the agency. The readers (called Shifters) decide what Quill Shift Literary takes on! Ayanna Coleman, Associate Manager of Events & Programs as well as the Librarian at the CBC and founder of this new agency, will still go through the submissions and pick which manuscripts she thinks are winners, but the readers who go onto quillshift.com are the ones who will get a free taste of those never-before-seen manuscripts and decide whether they’re worth further reading or not worth more of the readers’ time.

Kwame Alexander (He said, she said; Amistad) will be leading a group to Paris this July for the 2014 Book in a Day International Writing Retreat.

Join fellow writers and educators for Master Writing Classes, 4-Star Hotel Accommodations (4-nights), A Visit to Richard Wright’s Home and the Blacks in Paris tour, a tour of the locations featured in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, and much more.

Last week, I received an email from Cinco Puntos that Tim Tingle’s new book, House of Purple Cedar, is available for pre-order and this morning, my NPR station announced that Tingle will be in Indianapolis to perform a story titled, “Coyote This and Rabbit That, Native Trickster Tales” on Saturday. Yes, that’s a day lost to BFYA reading but I know it will be worth it.