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Jump to navigationJump to searchJim Dean Talks To Bookbag About The UK's First Ever YA Literature Convention (view source)
Revision as of 09:04, 14 July 2014
, 09:04, 14 July 2014no edit summary
Both the dystopian and superfans panel, in particular, were packed out, with 300 seats available and dozens standing around the outside. I think the overwhelming interest had taken many by surprise - we had early bird tickets which allowed us in from 9 o'clock and arrived a little before 9, eventually making it through massive queues for 10. I know some people queued for significantly longer and unfortunately on Saturday a few who turned up without tickets ended up not getting in because demand was so high. I think there was a combination of it being the first year for YALC and the staggering popularity of Marvel legend Stan Lee at LFCC which made it difficult to judge interest, but I know that if (fingers crossed!) the event runs again I'll be planning more carefully.
Panels on the Sunday were also great, with the highlight for me being newly-crowned Queen of Teen [[:Category:James Dawson|James Dawson]] moderating a really interesting one on sex in YA with [[:Category:Non Pratt|Non Pratt]], whose debut [[Trouble by Non Pratt|Trouble]] is one of my favourite contemporaries of this year, [[:Category:Cat Clarke|Cat Clarke]], and [[:Category:Beth Reekles|Beth Reekles]]. As expected the four pulled no punches, talking about age ratings (none of them are a fan!), New Adult, and the importance of teens being able to find out information about sex from books. I missed what sounded to be an excellent - but rather controversial - panel on crossover fiction, moderated by Scholastic's new commissioning editor David Maybury and featuring a stunning line-up of [[:Category:Matt Haig|Matt Haig]], [[:Category:Nick Lake|Nick Lake]], [[:Category:Anthony McGowan|Anthony McGowan]] and [[:Category:Meg Rosoff|meg Meg Rosoff]].
Much of the talk afterwards was about McGowan's criticism of fans of [[The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins]] and advice for them to live in the real world, with Lake pointing out that it perhaps wasn't the best audience for that comment! (In fairness to Anthony, who I'm a big fan of, people who were there suggested he was rather playing devil's advocate to make the panel more interesting, but perhaps misjudged things slightly.) As a huge fan of [[Hostage Three by Nick Lake]], I was thrilled to meet him briefly on Saturday night, along with the awesome [[:Category:Phil Earle|Phil Earle]], author of the wonderful [[The Bubble-Wrap Boy by Phil Earle|The Bubble-Wrap Boy]], and wished I could have made it to this panel. The convention as a whole was also slightly quieter on Sunday, which I found to be something of a relief!
