Around the office, we refer to this time of year as “Conference Season”. You’ll see why – here’s the schedule:
April: Texas Library Association Conference
May: International Reading Association Conference
May: SLJ Day of Dialog/BEA
June: ALA Annual Conference
It’s crazy…but we also have lots of fun. First up is TLA in Austin where we have a phenomenal line-up of authors signing with us:
Wednesday, April 13th
10:15 am – 11:00 am Pat Mora (author aisles)
10:15 am – 11:00 am Rafael Lopez (author aisles)
11:30 am – 12:30 pm Lauren Oliver (author aisles)
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Will Hobbs (author aisles)
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Bettina Restrepo (author aisles)
1:30 pm – 2:00 pm Crystal Allen (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Sophie Jordan (Harper booth 1824)
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm Tera Lynn Childs (Harper booth 1824)
3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Suzanne Harper (Harper booth 1824)
Thursday, April 14th
9:00 am – 10:00 am Diane Stanley (author aisles)
11:30 am – 12:00 pm Jason Henderson (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Jennifer Archer (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Kevin Henkes (author aisles)
3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Don Tate and Audrey Vernick (Harper booth 1824)
And don’t miss JAMIE LEE CURTIS as the Keynote Speaker on Wednesday, April 13th at 9:00 am!
Aside from our outstanding authors, we’ll have galleys galore at our booth (#1824) and we hope you’ll stop by to say hi to Patty, Robin, and me!
See you in Texas!
~ Laura
Today I am pleased to host Jennifer Archer, author of Through Her Eyes, as part of the Teen Book Scene blog tour (Click banner for more tour stops).
Throughout your life you have moved to so many places and experienced many environments. Do you feel this has given you an advantage with writing with your extra knowledge of different places and people throughout the country? Do any of your earlier works have roots somewhere specific that you lived?
Writers are readers. (Or should be!) I don’t know of any writers that don’t love books. When I began meeting other authors who moved a lot during their childhoods, as I did, I started wondering if always being the new kid on the block and at school affected us in similar ways that resulted in our becoming writers. For me, in addition to entertainment, books provided escape, companionship, and comfort when I was a child. I was never lonely, as long as I had a good book to read. While reading all of those books, I became intrigued by the art of storytelling, and awed by the power of words to paint vivid images in my mind, move me to laughter or tears, and make me genuinely care about people who didn’t actually exist. I also fell in love with the sound of words and sentences – how they can create a rhythm, just like music.
Living in a lot of different places influenced my writing in many ways. Of all of my work, only one novel and one novella have been set in a state I’ve never lived. The rest of my stories take place in states where I’ve been a resident, in fictional towns that resemble places I’ve lived or lived near. Here are some of the benefits of my nomadic background: If I want to set my story on a Kansas farm or someplace similar, I can close my eyes and remember the cornfield in Kansas I once lived across from. I can take myself back there in my imagination and hear the dry rustle of the stalks as my friends and I ran through the rows, and smell the earthy scent of the soil. If I want my story to take place in a region like Arizona, I can draw upon memories of living there – red clay dirt, the wind carrying the haunting sound of native Americans drumming and singing on the nearby reservation, Navajo babies nestled snugly in cradle boards made of wood. I know from personal experience that it’s not always sunny in southern California, that it does, indeed, snow in Texas, and that Colorado forests have a spicy, damp scent after a rain. I’ve found it helpful, in my work, to be able to pull from the first-hand knowledge of these personal experiences. And I believe I now pay closer attention to sensory details around me every day, because of the rich, varied and abundant sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and scents that I’ve been exposed to over my lifetime. Such details really help bring realism to stories, so as a writer, I feel fortunate to have had the sort of upbringing I did.
My “gypsy” life also allowed me to meet diverse types of people, which gave me great insights for creating fictional characters. I lived in New Mexico when I was eight years old, and experienced in a small way what it’s like to be a minority in America. I was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian child – typically the majority in the U.S. But in my third grade class, I was the only blonde-haired blue-eyed child, as most of my classmates were Mexican-American. Although, at first, I felt very conspicuous and was afraid I would never fit it and find friends, I was made to feel welcome right away. When I lived in Arizona during 4th and 5th grades, my best friend was a Hopi Indian whose grandparents lived on a reservation. These experiences served as great lessons in acceptance and awareness of the beauty of diversity for me. I learned to appreciate cultural cust
