Breathless—the Author talk

Ann Richards School

Feb. 15^th 2013

Today was the “Breathless” author talk panel at ARS.  Shawn invited four Young Adult novelists to come and speak to the young women about their books and their experience as writers.  The women on the panel were:  Marie Lu, who wrote the Legend Series; Brenna Yovanoff who wrote The Replacement and a new book called Paper Valentine; Jessica Khoury author of Origin; and Andrea Cremer the author of the Nightshade Series. At first it was difficult to tell the authors from the students, since they were all so young and dressed in jeans and t-shirts.  But I think their casual approach to the discussion panel made the students at ease and made them seem exceptionally relatable.  And again, I was really impressed with the ARS students who just jumped right into the questioning, asking really great questions that the writers loved to answer.  The writers spoke on every topic from creating believable characters to their writing process to how they develop the background knowledge for each novel.  They offered personal tidbits from their own work and from their novels—they spoke to which characters were a little bit based on their friends or family members and which personal events in their own lives helped to inform the storyline and some of the quirky aspects of various characters.  I was so impressed with how well spoken everyone was in the room—both ARS students and the young writers.  They are all clearly deeply thoughtful and critically analytical thinkers and it was so refreshing to hear such a high level discussion with a room full of young women.  The students were totally engaged and so excited to have this opportunity to speak with writers who took them seriously.  It was a super fun and exciting event!