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PLA Author Presentations
March 29, 2008 07:39 PM | General, Professional OrganizationsJill Veerkamp - SELCO-PLA Scholarship Recipient
Lanesboro Public Library
For my third day of the PLA conference, I decided to fill my time by going to the different author panel presentations. I first went to “Catch a Northern Star: Minnesota Authors Who Speak to Teens.” I was expecting only librarians from Minnesota to attend this session, but librarians from all over were there, and had to be explained the phenomenon of the “butterheads.” The authors at the presentation were Lois McMaster Bujold, Pete Hautman, Mary Logue, and Adam Stemple. It was a very good presentation, and many good issues were raised, such as the blurring between the Adult and Young Adult markets and how the even the label of “Young Adult” is in many ways an artificial and imposed category.
Next, I went to “The Best in Mystery Authors Revealed!” This panel featured T. Jefferson Parker, Linwood Barclay, C.J. Box, Laura Lippman, and Karen Rose. Each author gave a short talk about how they got into writing and usually the project that they were currently working on or promoting. Although these were mystery authors, they were extremely hilarious in their talks. They were also sure to point out the importance that libraries had in their early life and in their later career.
The last author presentation that I went to was “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and featured Nita Abrams, Connie Brockway, Kim Harrison, and Susan Kay Law. Kim Harrison made good point that different genre readers expect difference things from the books that they read. Since her books cross multiple genres, this becomes an interesting issue for her. One other question that the panel addressed was why people apologize for reading romance novels when no other genre creates similar sentiments. The panel as a whole felt that part of the problem was a gender issue, where women’s interests were considered less important or significant than more masculine interests.
