Book Festival: Dream Panel

The local chapter of SCBWI hosted a wonderful panel at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year called It was made up of authors Lari Don, Elizabeth Wein, and Candy Gourlay—all friends of mine. In fact, I ended up sitting with Lari's husband. I hang out with Elizabeth at Jane Yolen's Wayside. And I finally got to meet Candy in person after years of being online friends! They each read from their books, talked about their craft and making time for writing. They also discussed the reading environments they grew up with and writing stories that aren't your own, how each of them felt about that. It was an excellent talk and appealed to the wide range of audience members (teens to adult writers).As a bonus, I ended up sitting with some publishing friends and also Jill Calder, another of the illustrators who Jane works with. (She takes care of all of us!) Jane and I missed Jill's festival talk when Jane was visiting. We were both bummed. So I thought it ironic that Jill and I ended up meeting after all! So Jane, this is for you: