Event Recap: Susane Colasanti, Emery Lord, Sarah Mlynowski, Kieran Scott, Jen E. Smith, E. Lockhart

Tuesday night, Nicole and I went to a Great Teen Reads event at Books of Wonder. The event was really fun, so I decided to write another recap.

As you can already tell, there were a lot of authors there and a lot of books to talk about! (The event was also moderated by the lovely Gaby from Queen Ella Bee Reads.)

The event had some reading, some Q & A and (very excitingly!) a show and tell.

Susane Colasanti kicked things off. She was representing her latest Now & Forever which is about the girlfriend of the world’s most famous rockstar. The cover is sparkly and amazing and I can’t wait to read it. (Also Susane used her former-teacher brain to good effect and remembered me from previous events! So: proof we are friends! Proof!)

For Susane’s show and tell she related back to the book and how people always tend to compare who is the biggest fan of, well, anything. Spoiler: Susane will always be the biggest fan. She shared photos from seeing John Mayer front row center AND a postcard Nick Hornby wrote to her in 1998. Bow down to the master guys!

This is Susane’s “Obviously I am the biggest fan here” face. Emery, like the rest of us, was very impressed.

Next up was Emery Lord talking about her debut Open Road Summer. Emery brought a replica Bruce Springsteen tour shirt (because her book is about a teen country music star on tour–Emery said she had always wondered what was happening inside those tour buses so she wrote about it) and a bracelet from her best friend because the book is also all about friendship. (I’m reading this one as we speak and am really like it!)

Here is Emery holding up her replica Bruce Springsteen tour shirt before talking about the inspiration of Open Road Summer.

Sarah Mlynowski was talking about her newest YA title Don’t Even Think About It (and she’s working on a sequel! I totally thought this book was a standalone). She brought a picture of a creepy building with no windows. That inspired her to write about a secret school which eventually morphed into writing about a homeroom class where everyone gets ESP after receiving flu shots from a bad batch of vaccine. (Sarah is always super funny so of course she was hilarious here as well!)

Here’s Sarah with the photo of the creepy windowless building. She said the name but, sadly, I can’t remember what that name was now.

Kieran Scott talked about her newest book–the first in a trilogy–called Only Everything which has a fantastic cover. One of the characters in this book suddenly realizes he is a good runner and makes the varsity cross country team causing a bit of an identity crisis. She brought in her own Varsity Jacket to represent this push and pull. Also: a copy of Persuasion which she had to teach a class period of in college (something a different character has to do in the book when her class reads Great Expectations). I also realized that Kieran Scott and Kate Brian are the same person–I am still miffed at Nicole for not making this clearer to me much earlier. (I should also note that I was at a bad angle to photograph Kieran–and Jen and E.–so the photos might be blurry. Alas!)

Here’s Kieran in her fierce Varsity jacket before reading a super sweet passage from her book!

Jennifer E. Smith’s newest book The Geography of You and Me is part romance, part travel book. Her heroine Lucy spends part of the novel in Scotland–a place Jen has actually visited. While there (and in Ireland) Jen fell in love with Rugby so she decided this time around to write a rugby player into the story. She brought not one but two miniature rugby balls to represent that love.

Jen showed her mini rugby ball too quickly to photograph, so just imagine she’s holding it here and then reading about the cute rugby player with a minor role in this book.

E. Lockhart rounded out the group with her highly secretive new title We Were Liars. The story includes fairy tales and characters writing mottos on their hands so showed off a handsome copy of Perrault’s fairy tales to represent the power of fairy tales (a device Cady uses throughout the story to share truths about her family that, in the moment, are too unspeakable to say explicitly). She also had the words DON’T PANIC written on the backs of her hands.

E. was basically too far away and fast to photograph with her book. So just imagine it and know that her hands have DON’T on one hand and PANIC on the other in sharpie at the moment this was taken.

After reading and show and tell it was time for a brief Q & A followed by signings. I won’t bore you all by bragging (again) but it is very satisfying in a strange way to realize that authors recognize readers too. This was one of the best panels I’ve seen in a while and I definitely have some more books on my TBR list now.