There were jazz hands. And singing.

That’s what happens when you bring together four authors—Libba Bray, John Green, David Levithan and E. Lockhart—with a flair for the dramatic. The event, held last night at the packed South Court auditorium of the main branch of the New York Public Library, was aptly subtitled An Evening of Readers’ Theater. It showed the audience that if this whole writing thing doesn’t work out, all four of the authors could probably have new careers as readers—especially if they read together.

Each of the authors read a selection from their most recent work: Bray’s Going Bovine, Levithan and Green’s co-authored Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Lockhart’s The Treasure Map of Boys. The twist, however, was that they were each assigned parts and read the selection almost as if it were a play.

The Treasure Map of Boys was the first up, with Bray reading the part of the narrator and heroine Ruby Oliver, Green reading the part of Ruby’s semi-love interest, Noel, Levithan reading the part of Hutch, another student, and Lockhart reading Nora, who is a close friend of Ruby’s. The scene was an important one because it illustrates one of Ruby’s fatal flaws: being unable to keep herself from flirting with someone who is technically off limits.

The authors read together exceedingly well; it was clear that they not only rehearsed but also deeply understood each other’s work. I’ve read The Treasure Map of Boys but found the reading to be extremely vivid, almost to the point where it changed the way I perceived the scene. As a reader, I knew that Nora was seriously annoyed with Ruby. But hearing it out loud—particularly with Lockhart’s delivery and inflections as Nora—made what Ruby did seem even worse.

The authors proceeded onto a selection from Green’s Will Grayson, with Levithan reading the part of Tiny Cooper. His delivery got the biggest laughs from the audience and his pronunciation of the word “boobs” particularly amused Green, who commented on it afterward. The back and forth following this reading gave Bray a case of the giggles, which persisted into the next reading (a selection from Levithan’s Will Grayson) and eventually led Green to say, “Don’t make me take narrator! Because I’ll do it.” This helped Bray to recover and get through the rest of the selection without laughing.

The second part of the reading was vastly different. The authors, Levithan explained, would be reading from unpublished works in progress. As a result, he asked that no notes be taken or video or audio recorded. What was interesting was that all of the authors are working on something different from what they had published before. Green, for example, is working with a female narrator while Lockhart is working on a book for middle-grade readers.

Despite the changes in genre and perspectives, it was still possible to hear the authors’ distinctive voices. This part of the reading felt much different than the light-hearted first part. The authors read more slowly and seemed almost shy and tentative, possibly because of the unfinished nature of what they were reading.

Samantha Rowan is a journalist and aspiring YA novelist in New York City. Her favorite novel is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

Look for The Star Shack in June.

Sarah Mlynowski followed Daphne, with a reading from her book Gimme a Call, which is out next month. As the topic was first drafts and revisions, she told us all that she absolutely hates writing first drafts and considers the process to be torture.

But she got lots of laughs — good, earnest, “we-love-you-Sarah” laughs — as she read from her first draft. This seemed to annoy Sarah.

“No laughing!” she said. “This is the bad draft!” Whatever, Sarah. Bad draft or not, you’re still way ahead of most of us.

She continued to tell us that, even if you’re trying to write about a character being absolutely miserable, you can’t make the reader miserable. This is a good point.

By the way, Sarah writes outlines for all of her books. Some of them are fifteen pages long!

In my next post later today, I’ll tell you about some more of the authors who spoke last night.

The authors on the panel are Nick Burd, Matt de la Pena, Gordon Korman, David Levithan, Barry Lyga, Michael Northrop, Jon Skavron and Jake Wizner.

I won’t be able to make it, but if you go, please do report back here and tell us how it went.

Also, tomorrow is the BIG DAY, on which the Most Famous Authors of Them All will speak. It’s going to be at the main branch of the NYPL on 42nd Street, and will feature Libba Bray, John Green, David Levithan and E. Lockhart. It all starts at 6 p.m. Be there! The authors will talk about Going Bovine, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and more.

PS. I’ll be back later today with more about last night’s panel. There was too much awesomeness for just one post!

Eliot Shrefer, whom you may know as the author of the fantastic (and scary!) School for Dangerous Girls, read from his upcoming work, The Deadly Sister. To be honest, I didn’t settle in very well for his reading, because he gave these signs to David Levithan (author, editor, and event organizer extraordinaire). What I mean is … look for yourself:

Right. So as Eliot read from his first draft, David kept butting in with these signs. There was one with an X on it, meaning that David — in his editor hat — was cutting whatever Eliot was saying. There was one with a talky bubble, which David held up whenever he wanted to interject a thought of his own. And there was one, the one David holds here, that said “insert,” which usually meant David wanted to add a word that made the sentence more grammatical.

It was hilarious. Also? Scary. Because David was switching signs every few seconds, cutting and interjecting and inserting until Eliot’s work was whimpering on the floor. Here is what Eliot looked like as he read while David edited:

Eliot, by the way, is a fan of outines. “You’re actually driving a really large bus when you’re writing a novel,” he said, comparing an outline to a Pinto. (You have probably not seen a Pinto, but just think of it as a non-functional Smart Car from the 1970s.)

Next up was the lovely Gayle Forman, who read from her most recent novel, If I Stay. Gayle had some choice things to say about YA writing and editing. For example: “I kind of keep quiet to my friends in the adult publishing world about the amazing quality of the editors that I work with.” (This made me want to stand up and cheer, in a sort of nyah-nyah nyah-nyah way, for YA lit and authors and editors and fans.)

Gayle is not only a great writer, but she has awesome hair and the coolest black boots I’ve ever seen. Alas, the boots are not pictured, but I assure you that they had the best chunky silver hardware I’ve ever seen.

She talked about having something called a “nurse log,” which is a defunct, never-to-be-published book out of which many of her ideas grow. Oh, and she told us that she knows a novel is done when she can read it aloud without gagging. If only my gag reflex were so intelligent!

More TK — There were a ton of authors, and I will write about every one of them, but it may take a little while. Keep checking back!

Much love,
brina

I hope you haven’t forgotten that the NYC Teen Author Festival starts tomorrow. The first event will be a seminar called “First Draft to Final Draft – Talking About the Writing Process,” at 6 p.m. at the Tompkins Square Branch of the New York Public Library. Lots of cool writers will be there; full details are over at the FaceBook page, but here a few names jumped out at me: Daphne Grab, author of Alive and Well in Prague, New York — loved that book! — will be speaking. So will Natalie Standiford, whose recent book How to Say Goodbye in Robot is seriously awesome. Blake Nelson, one of my heroes, and the author of the 90s grunge rock masterpiece Girl, will also be on the panel. And so will a whole big bunch of other great authors.

I will be attempting to attend just about every event, and I’ll be taking photos and blogging about the events after the fact. So check back here late tomorrow night for an update.

And if you make it to the events, please do come over and introduce yourself! If anyone is interested in writing a guest post about the festival, please do e-mail me!

Much love,
brina

Libba Bray, Natalie Standiford, Barnabas Miller and Dan Ehrenraft will serenade us as their band, Tiger Beat, performs on March 18.

There will be workshops, and signings, and lots of YA wackiness. David Levithan, author and editor extraordinaire, has outdone himself. I scanned the list of events and almost passed out from the unbelievable awesomeness.

Everyone will be there. In addition to David and the members of Tiger Beat, you can expect to see John Green, E. Lockhart, Sarah Mlynowski, Barry Lyga, Diana Peterfreund, Melissa Walker, Sarah Dessen … and many, many others. More than I can list.

Suffice it to say, this will be the best YA week of the year. So book your flights and your hotel rooms, and check out the NYC Teen Author Festival Facebook page for detailed info on the who, what, when and where.

Hope to see you there!

Much love,
brina

And yes, I’ve got reviews coming for you soon. Thing is, I’ve spent the last month reading thousands of pages of trashy historical romance. Don’t worry. I’m almost done, and it will be a good five years (at least) before I walk the romance road again.

Seven thousand pages. Seven.

A gaggle of teen authors will be doing their thing at the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library tonight. Six p.m., Sixth Avenue at 10th Street.

From the FaceBook page:

Micol and David Ostow: So Punk Rock
Elizabeth Scott: Love You Hate You Miss You
Delia Sherman: The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen
Jennifer Smith: You Are Here
Suzanne Weyn: Distant Waves
Jake Wizner: Castration Celebration
Jessica Wollman: Second Skin

Of these books, I’ve only read Distant Waves, but I can tell you that David Levithan, the venerable author, editor and event organizer, has excellent taste. (Oh, and Distant Waves is awesome.)

Hopefully I’ll be able to snag copies of some of these books for you tonight, as well as taking pics and writing up the event for those of you who are not in New York or who are unable to make it to tonight’s reading.

But if you’re free, and you’re in or near NYC, please do come. It should be a blast!

PS. Elizabeth Scott is crazy prolific. I just read Something, Maybe, which debuted in April, and it turns out that Love You, Hate You, Miss You is her brand new book out this month. Wow!

HOWEVER, I am inviting you to send me your pictures. If you go to the film on opening night, e-mail me pics of the crowd. I want to see any and all wackiness, from lines extending down three blocks to people in vampire and werewolf outfits to … well, you get the idea. I’ll post the best pics here on YA New York. Please be sure to include you names (or your internet handles) and locations, so I can give you attribution. A short description wouldn’t go awry, either.

Now, it’s the weekend. I may or may not be attending one or more events this weekend, and I may or may not tell you about them come Monday. For now, everyone go re-read E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.

Much love,
brina

You know why? Not only were there six amazing authors reading from their books, but we were also graced with the presence of a celebrity guest. Yes, indeed, a woman so recognizable and so widely beloved that I fully expect you all to kick yourselves for not attending.

A pity you missed it, but I’m going to share it with you anyway. Ready? Pics inside!

This is Martin Wilson, author of What They Always Tell Us. He seemed a bit nervous, but needlessly so, because his reading made me desperately want his book. Lucky for me, I was sitting next to his publicist, who had a Mary Poppins-like bag of readable goodies by her side. Martin’s book features a character who drinks Pine Sol at a party, and another who goes on a “La Quinta weekend” with his girlfriend. David Levithan, who of course hosted the evening’s festivities, wanted to know why the book wasn’t called La Quinta Weekend. I’ll tell you if I agree with David once I’ve read Martin’s book.

Next up was Matt de la Peña, whose new book is called Mexican White Boy. It is, not surprisingly, about a kid who is half white and half Mexican, and just from Matt’s reading I decided the book was both funny and heartbreaking. Also, definitely familiar territory for anyone who’s ever been called a half-blood, half-breed, or whatever other slurs are in these days for those of us who are racially mixed. Oh, and isn’t Matt a cutie? If there was a website that was like, the opposite of Go Fug Yourself, and it was only about authors, I’d totally be the one running it. And I’d totally put Matt on the list. As well as …

Lauren Mechling. Who I think I’ve said often enough is awesome. And whose new book I already told you was kickass. She read well, but I was like, “No! Not that passage! What if you give something away?!?” Except of course she didn’t, and she stopped at exactly the right moment, and all the other authors looked seriously enthralled, and afterwards they all seemed to want to read Dream Girl. (And well they should, because Lauren has single-handedly resurrected the mystery-for-teens category, featuring Claire Voyante, girl detective.) Ugh. Does it just seem to you like I’m worshipping at Lauren’s feet?

Dude. With shoes like that, wouldn’t you? Ahem. I’m sorry, this isn’t a beauty blog, it’s a book blog, right? So I should move on now.

… To our next author, who is also gorgeous, and has an awesomely hot book cover, over which David drooled quite effusively. Lauren McLaughlin’s book Cycler comes out Tuesday. You’ll have to wait until next week for a full review, but let’s just say it is worth buying on release day. Or pre-ordering so it arrives on release day. Actually, there are two books coming out on Tuesday, both of which you must read, and Lauren’s is one of them. So please, do clear your schedules, yes?

Nora Baskin read from her first teen book — she’s mostly done middle grade work until now — All We Know of Love. The scene she read was kind of hot and steamy, but also very thoughtful. Like, the main character talks about how she replays every conversation, touch, kiss and so forth in her head, and I know that’s something we have all done. Anyway, Nora’s book is really about a young woman who has been abandoned by her mother (when the girl was three, though) and goes off in search of her. I can’t wait to read it, as soon as I get my grubby little hands on a copy. (Nora was also wearing super-awesome shoes, but she changed into a pair of sandals before I could get a picture of her heels. Seriously cool red Mary Janes with big chunky heels. Alas, the description doesn’t do it justice.)

Now. David started out the question and answer session, and I don’t remember the first question except that Matt answered by saying, “There were no strippers. … This time around I knew there would be no strippers.” Oh! I think David was asking what it was like writing this particular book, as each author was doing something a little different this time around. Martin’s book is his first, Matt’s is his sophomore effort, Lauren Mechhling’s is her first solo effort, and both Lauren McLaughlin and Nora were new to teen lit.

For instance, Martin says of his book, “It’s not autobiographical, but it is.”

And Lauren Mechling says, on writing alone, “It was just a much bigger deal for me. it was like taking my water wings off, finally.”

Lauren McLaughlin says she hated Jill, one of the two main characters in her book, for ages. “It took me three drafts before I could even tolerate her.” She added, though, that the character we meet in Cycler is probably a better person than the one with whom Lauren started out.

Oh! And Lauren McLaughlin got the idea for her book … from having agonizing menstrual cramps.

Nora said she enjoyed being able to use bigger words and sexier words and play a bit with structure on this book, which she can’t do for middle grade lit. As for what inspired her novel, she shared with us all that her mother had committed suicide when Nora was three. So she tried to imagine what it would be like if the form of abandonment her mom had chosen had not been so permanent, and that’s how she conceived this novel. Which again, makes me want to read it all the more. And then she went from super-serious, about her mom dying and stuff, to hilarious: “I fucked up my kids, too.” After everyone laughed, she said, “I’m very funny.”

Okay. Now we get to our celebrity guest, featured in the pic below with David Levithan. This is from a different event, because I didn’t think it would be polite to photograph audience members like some sort of paparazzo.

That’s our own darling David Levithan on the left … with our own awesome Libba Bray on the right. Yes, my friends, Libba was there, and maybe that means the Q & A session ended up being very funny indeed.

“What would be the rock opera of your life?” Libba asked, along with some other serious question about anything surprising that comes up in writing. I mean, the serious question was serious and important, but … umm … rock opera???

Nora says there was a rock opera about her life, Tommy. One of the Laurens, and alas, I can’t remember which, claims to have written half a rock opera called Food, the Opera. Matt says he doesn’t know what a rock opera is, and Martin says he doesn’t actually like rock music, so his would be a boring pop opera about a boy who doesn’t like rock music.

As for surprising things, Lauren Mechling was surprised that, when she quit her day job to write Dream Girl it wasn’t all yoga and museums and that actually she didn’t get out of the house much at all. Matt was surprised at how important the peripheral characters became to him, and now he’s actually working on a book that focuses on a supporting cast member from Mexican White Boy. Lauren McLaughlin was surprised that her book ended up being so psychological, and she surprised all of us by announcing she’s currently working on a sequel to the book.

One woman in the audience, someone I should probably have recognized because she was sitting next to Libba and looked very recognizable, asked what people thought of the whole YA Ghetto thing. YAY! Someone asked this question!

My favorite response was Lauren Mechling’s: “I am YA and proud.” Dude, I’m totally going to make some FaceBook flair expressing that very sentiment. Martin said he loves the fact that there isn’t as much pressure in YA to be a rock star with your first book, and Lauren McLaughlin said she didn’t even know YA existed until she wrote the book and Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier told her it was a teen book. Nora gave us another perspective, which is that apparently it’s kind of hard to break into YA from middle grade fiction. That was sort of a surprise to me, since so many people say it’s hard to break into adult fiction from YA.

Now, my friends, I have gone on for far too long. But aren’t you glad I did? Aren’t you sad you weren’t there? Aren’t Lauren Mechling’s shoes fabulous?

♥♥♥,
brina