Young Author Conferences boost writing and reading skills
by Margriet Ruurs
“Wow! Do you know that you are world famous in Kamloops?” A young student stares, wide-eyed, at her favorite author: Ann Walsh, author of Flower Power. Writer and reader are brought together by the Kamloops’ Young Author Conference.
“Can I shake your hand?”
“Can you autograph my book?”
“I want to be an author, too, when I grow up!”
These are just a few of the comments heard at Young Author Conferences around North America.
How is a Young Author Conference (YAC) organized, and do they make a difference to a student’s desire and skills to read and write? That is a question I asked several coordinators of such events.
Young Author Conferences may vary in size and length, but most have several things in common: They are coordinated by dedicated volunteers, attended by eager students, and embraced by teachers and parents as a valuable asset.
In 1986, a group of local teachers from school district #68 in Nanaimo, British Columbia, together with local booksellers and librarians from the Vancouver Island Regional Library, organized the first Vancouver Island Children’s Book Festival in Nanaimo. The following year, Malaspina College joined as a sponsor, providing a central site for the festival. Today, the first Saturday in May still marks Bookfest day, bringing hundreds of K–8 children to campus to meet their favorite authors and illustrators. The festival’s mission is as follows:
to promote literacy and a love of literature in the central Vancouver Island region by introducing children to high-quality works by Canadian authors and illustrators,
to stimulate children’s creativity by bringing them together with professional authors and illustrators who share their creative processes,
to celebrate excellence in Canadian children’s literature and book illustration by showcasing both well-established and notable new authors and illustrators.
The Alabama Young Authors’ Conference is coupled with presentation of the Roberta Long Medal for Distinguished Contributions to Literature, which celebrates the cultural diversity of children. The medal is presented on the night before the conference, enabling speakers and teachers to meet at a reception.
Alabama’s YAC has been held for 21 years. The event is coordinated and hosted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and several university faculty members serve on the steering committee as volunteers. Elementary and high school students attend the conference, which is held in buildings across the campus.
A local college campus is a popular venue for a YAC. A campus offers lots of space for workshops and general sessions, and the facility is usually, on a Saturday, made available to local schools at no charge.
A YAC offers a terrific way for elementary, middle, and high school students to meet published authors and illustrators, to listen to presentations about writing and drawing, and to learn “the story behind the book.” Often, the participating students actually get to write during a workshop as well.
Speakers at a YAC often include a variety of both nationally known and local authors and illustrators. Some conferences have only one or two speakers: an author for one group and an illustrator for the other. Then both groups rotate, allowing the speakers to present twice and the entire audience to hear both speakers. Other YACs host up to 10 speakers, including picture book writers, illustrators, a poet, a nonfiction writer, a local broadcaster or news reporter, and so on.
In Nanaimo, a special committee consisting of the festival coordinator; representatives from the library, school district, and bookstore; and the school visit coordinator select each year’s speakers. They balance the program to include writers of books for all age ranges as well as various genres. They review published works, presenters’ websites, and available promotional and review materials before making their selections.
At the Alabama YAC, participants from grades 1–8 pay a modest $4 fee to register. With an audience range of between 3,500 and 4,500, this provides the conference with a workable budget. “We invite the best speakers we can afford,” says longtime coordinator Maryann Manning. “This past year our speakers included Ashley Bryan, Eloise Greenfield, David Harrison, and others.” Parents bring their students to the Saturday event and are invited to attend their own, separate session. Other YACs allow parents to attend a session if accompanied by a child, while still others do not involve parents at all because the event is held at school during school hours.
In Whitehorse, Yukon, the Young Authors event is held at the high school two days during a weeklong, community-wide Yukon Writers Festival. Teachers work as volunteers, together with one library resource person, to coordinate the day. To select authors, Joyce Sward, an English teacher and department head at F.H. Collins Secondary School in Whitehorse, depends on her own and others’ knowledge of good books as well as recommendations from others who have heard certain authors speak.
The Whitehorse festival is funded through the Writers Union of Canada, which makes grants available to cover authors’ fees and travel expenses, along with the Department of Education, the Yukon Science Institute, and local businesses. Sometimes a local hotel will donate rooms, or at least offer a substantial discount, to host out-of-town speakers. It may be worthwhile to approach a business about sponsorship for an event that will boost children’s reading and writing skills.
Funding from the Canada Council for the Arts helps to bring speakers from across the country to the Nanaimo YAC. The YAC in Fort St. John, British Columbia, is entirely funded by the superintendent’s office—a great example to administrators everywhere.
In some cases funding also comes from the sale of books. If the conference coordinators choose to do so, they can order books by participating speakers at a discount from the publisher. The profit, sometimes as much as 40%, will help to strengthen the YAC budget.
While almost all coordinators seem to avoid a “contest” approach, selection of participants varies. In some districts students are invited to submit a manuscript if they wish to be considered. Stories are selected on merit and effort, and their young authors invited to participate. In other areas, classroom teachers select students, or students simply volunteer. Some YACs publish an anthology of the students’ stories and poems to share in the school library.
Classroom teachers, district staff, and parents agree that a Young Author Conference gets kids excited about writing. Students get to meet published authors, ask questions, and learn more about how books are created. They also meet other kids who like writing. It may even be an opportunity for a student to discover that it’s OK to get excited about reading and writing books rather than sports.
Dianna Bonder, the author and illustrator of many books for children, including A Pacific Alphabet and Leon’s Song, says, “I attended a Young Author Conference in Kamloops when I was in grade 6. We met different authors. The one I remember most was Joan Weir. I was a big fan of her YA novels, and so meeting a famous author was very exciting for me. To this day, I remember both the story I wrote to successfully be accepted into the YA conference and the comments Joan made about my story. She really inspired me with the positive feedback she gave me. If a famous author could say good things about my work, then maybe I really could be a writer someday.”
Years later, Weir’s words came flooding back to Bonder when she started to illustrate and write her own books. Meeting an author at such a young age, she believes, definitely helped motivate her in her writing and made her realize that her dreams could come true. She adds, “At the same time, if you are a serious young writer it can also crush your ego when you are not accepted to attend the conference. I must, however, say that crushing your ego can also be a good thing. It helps a young person learn that the road to success is often a very difficult one.”
Bonder confirms that students who love writing conferences are often different than the students who live for sports events. “Being accepted into something that only a few other children are accepted into and discovering that I was a good enough writer to be selected (ultimately my story was selected into the conference anthology), I felt like I was someone special. It came at a time in my life when I needed that ‘something special.’”
Now Bonder regularly presents at Young Author Conferences herself. “Quite often in these conferences, I come across children that seem a bit awkward and shy, a bit different than the other kids...but the one thing they all have in common is that they can write and they can write well. I think that is so very, very important!”
So, why not offer your students an opportunity to attend a Young Author Conference? You may want to start small—in your own school. Get a few others on board to help you organize: the media specialist, an administrator, the reading teacher, an interested parent. You can organize the event to include the entire school or just a few keen writers. Your event might grow and blossom into an annual event.
“It’s a lot of work,” says Sward, “But it is really worthwhile for students to see that there are living writers who are open to sharing their expertise.”
Margriet Ruurs is the author of popular books both for educators and children.
Here are some websites that provide useful information about Young Author Conferences.
Alabama Young Authors’ Conference
Bookfest, the Vancouver Island Children’s Festival
McLean County (Illinois) Unit District 5 Young Author’s Program
Learning from the pros. (October 2006). Reading Today, 24(2), 26.
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