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PLA Day #3
March 28, 2008 10:19 PM | Professional OrganizationsMilly Halverson, SELCO-PLA Scholarship Recipient
Spring Grove Public Library
Today was a day of author programs. This morning I attended Catch a Northern Star: Minnesota Authors Who Speak to Teens. Good discussion on what fits as Juvenile Lit and YA Literature. Authors have such great humor as they speak about their writing about the genres they write. Pete Hauptman, Lois Bujold, Mary Logue, Adam Stemple and Carolyn Stevermer had a round table discussion on YA Literature and what YA's are looking for. Supernatural, teen situations and fantasy were some of the sub-genres they spoke to.
Linwood Barclay, CJ Box, Laura Lippman, T Jefferson Parker, and Karen Rose were the mystery authors in the program, The Best in Mystery Authors Revealed. We were hoping they would surprise us with the endings to some of their books, but no such luck. They spoke about becoming writers. CJ Box was not published until he was 40 years old and he writes outdoor mysteries. Each of us received a copy of their book.
The only program I attended today that wasn't authors was on RX for RA -- Training Library Staff in Fiction and Non-Fiction. Very good program on improving staff knowledge on different genres. Most of the libraries doing the program were from large libraries and I had to pick and choose what would work in a small library.
The last program of the day was "What's Love Got to Do With It." Romance is the most popular genre in the USA with 1.2 billion sales in 2004. The authors from Minnesota again were just hilarious. They bantered back and forth about their writing routines and some are very on schedule but Connie Brockway and Susan Kay Law write when the deadline is getting close. Nita Abrams is changing from romance to Historical fiction. Kim Harrison described herself as writing Urban Fantasy. We received a book from each author. I'm a little tired tonight, so that's all folks.
