Rocky Point, Teen Author Festival, and I-Con

Been a busy little Sarah here...

Rocky Point Middle School

I did a school visit on the 12th at Rocky Point Middle School (in Long Island), and here is the first sight that greeted me when I walked into the school:

Amazing Wall Mural of ICE Cover Art

Is there anything more awesome than that? And to those of you who reply that an actual polar bear waiting to greet me would be more awesome, I say, "You are incorrect, sir." An actual polar bear would have eaten me.

This mural was surrounded by the three winners of the poster contest:

Sooooo cool.

The rest of the day was similarly awesome. I spoke with the 8th grade first, then the 6th grade, then the 7th grade, and I had lunch in the library with the book club, the winners of the poster contest, and several faculty members.

Thank you to everyone at Rocky Point Middle School, especially their fantastic library media specialist Cathy O'Connell and wonderful principal Scott O'Brien!

NYC Teen Author Festival

The NYC Teen Author Festival rocked.

On Friday, I participated in the symposium at the New York Public Library. After saying hello to the lions...


... I was part of the panel on "Genre and Adolescence" with Judy Blundell, Lauren McLaughlin, Diana Peterfreund, Sara Shepard, Maggie Stiefvater, and Robin Wasserman. I had a tremendously fun time.

I also learned a valuable lesson: when participating in such events, choose socks with care. Sitting on stage, without a table to hide behind, my ankles were very visible to the audience. On Friday, I had managed to dress like a grown up in every respect except my socks. My socks had these ridiculous fat Garfield-esque cats on them.

I'm so not good at this looking-like-a-grown-up thing.

On Sunday (wearing polar bear socks), I signed books along with 60+ other authors at Books of Wonder for the final event of the NYC Teen Author Festival. It was like a whole afternoon-long cocktail party (minus the cocktails but plus a slice of Coe Booth's birthday cake) with tons of fantastic and fascinating people to talk to. Here's a photo from the event, courtesy of author Courtney Sheinmel:

Courtney Sheinmel, Natalie Standiford, Me, Elizabeth Scott

Huge thank you to Books of Wonder, NYPL, and David Levithan, who organized the entire festival!

Upcoming Event: I-Con

Next weekend I'll be a program participant at I-Con, a science fiction and fantasy convention at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, NY. My schedule is:

Friday 3/26, 8pm - Reception - "Meet the Pros(e)"
Sunday 3/28, 12pm - Reading
Sunday 3/28, 2pm - Panel - "Varieties of Writing"

Hope to see you there!