PAYA Festival

So last Saturday, I had the great fortune of attending the PAYA Festival, a YA lit event organized by the incredible Skyanne of Harmony Book Reviews. PAYA is an acronym for "Bringing YA 2 PA," which raises money and collects YA book donations for Pennsylvania public libraries. It was held in West Chester, PA, which was about 30 minutes away from me. As we've almost never had a large, multi-author YA event in Pennsylvania, I was really excited to be a part of this one!

I arrived a little before 9AM to help Skyanne set up. We drew signs leading up to the obscure little building--in the picture you see Skyanne hard at work setting up a sign!--and then I drew lots of signs and labels for the rooms inside. From 10-12, I attended a writing workshop with the authors Jon Skovron, Josh Berk, Stephanie Kuehnert, Jeri Smith-Ready, Amy Brecount-White, and Shannon Delany (am I missing anyone? I really really really hope not!). Each author shared their experience with one aspect of the writing process, from writing REALLY crappy rough drafts to working with the entire editorial and publishing team to make your book amazing. For the second hour, we divided up into two groups of authors and aspiring writers, and each of us aspiring writers got to have a page or two of our WIPs verbally critiqued by the authors!

New books on sale for the author signings.

The raffles table.

It was exciting to see the new books to be sold being set up by Children's Book World, as well as people looking at the basket raffles full of amazing goodies, and the used book sales. 1-3 was the author signing! I'm sad to say that I did not get very many books signed, as I was low on money. However, it was so great to see how BUSY the event was! For a first-time event, with a location that was a little difficult to find, I was really happy with the crowd we had drawn.

Some of the authors who came to the event, with Skyanne in the middle!

I especially had a wonderful time meeting all the bloggers who had gone! I got to see again Skyanne of Harmony Book Reviews (of course), Kristi of The Story Siren, and James of Book Chic. I especially loved meeting new bloggers though. I met and got to talk to Anne of Potter, Percy, and I, a 12-year-old blogger who came with her mom; Caitlin of Scarrlet Reader (she and her mom actually came down from basically near my hometown in North Jersey--stupid Jersey Turnpike traffic!); Jenn of Book Crazy and her daughter; Jamie of Broke and Bookish and Perpetual Pageturner; Christina of Confessions of a Book Addict; and oh gosh I know there are quite a few more but my mind is blaaaaaaaaaanking, so if I missed you please leave me a comment and I will link to you!

A small sampling of bloggers: Chelsea (The Page Flipper), me, Kristi (Story Siren), Skyanne, and James (Book Chic).

Anyway, overall it was fantastic turnout with such a positive, happy, and supportive atmosphere. A special thanks to Skyanne for organizing everything, Children's Book World for supplying us with books to buy for the signings, the various people who contributed to the raffles and book sales, and last but not least, the authors who were the only reason this event was possible. Let's hope that PAYA Festivals in years to come will only get bigger and better from here! (They have a lot to live up to.)

Are you coming to PAYA?

Probably my favorite nonprofit YA reach-out program has some fantastic news to announce!

PAYA: Bringing YA to PA is an organization started by blogger Harmony of Harmony Book Reviews. It's dedicated to raising money and collecting books for libraries across the state of Pennsylvania. Since its beginning in October of 2009, PAYA has raised over $1,000 and collected hundreds of books for libraries across the state of Pennsylvania.

PAYA's main fundraiser is an annual one-day festival. This year it will be held in West Chester, Pennsylvania on August 21st. It will feature over 15 authors, including Amy Brecount White, Stephanie Kuehnert, Jeri Smith-Ready, Josh Berk, Jon Skovron, Jennifer Hubbard, Shannon Delany, and more. The signing will run from 1pm-3pm. Books will be sold by Children's Book World from Haverford, PA. The festival will also feature two writing workshops, one aimed directly at teens and another at any aspiring writer. Fundraisers such as a basket raffle and used book sale will be held during the signing as well.

More information about the festival can be found here (http://www.bringya2pa.com/2010/07/paya-2010-festival-all-details.html).

Did you get that? To reiterate, this is what's going on at PAYA:

• Multi-author book signing
• Writing workshop for aspiring writers (!!!)
• Raffles and auctions
• Used book sale

Can you say "HOLY.....!!!!" and get your butt out there on August 21?!?!? Because I'm certainly going to be there! Few things seem to ever happen in the Philly area, and so I am so excited about this, and proud of my blogger friend for organizing it all. Seriously, people, she's a teen herself! Come out and support YA lit!

PAYA is currently accepting monetary and book donations, both of which will be used to support Pennsylvania libraries. Librarians interested in receiving funds or books from PAYA and authors interested in attending the festival should email bringya2pa[at]yahoo[dot]com.

Oh yeah, and also send an email to that email address if you're interested in signing up for the workshop. They do cost money so sign up early to avoid the late fee. I'm pretty sure Harmony is still open to more authors who'd like to participate, so please, do not hesitate to contact her!

Hope to see a great many of you there at the most exciting YA event that has ever come to Eastern Pennsylvania! Now I'm going to go back to working on fliers and press contacts for PAYA...

Support Libraries! Cool PAYA Auctions!

I've mentioned PAYA--or, Bring YA2PA--before, particularly in my post about donating books to libraries. PAYA is a nonprofit run by the lovely Harmony Book Reviews in order to support public libraries across the state of Pennsylvania, all of whom received a 30+% budget cut last fall. I recognize that many other states are facing similar budget cuts, and you're welcome to contact Harmony from the PAYA website if you're thinking about what you yourself can do to help your own state's libraries.

The reason for this post today, however, is to encourage you all to check out the PAYA spring auctions that are currently going on! New auctions are posted every Friday and run for one week each (although I'm currently talking with Harmony to try to convince her to keep them open for a little longer... *grins*), and all proceeds will go to PA libraries. There are so many pretty and cool things being auctioned off: signed books, handmade jewelry, manuscript/chapter critiques, and much more! The prices are also currently very low too... which is, y'know, kind of sad for us PAYA workers, but all the better for you! Please please please consider going to the auction website, checking out the items available, bidding on some, and bookmarking the site for future perusals. Now is a wonderful time for you to break out of your strictly capitalist economic endeavors and feel like a good citizen of the planet for buying some for other-than-simply-selfish reasons. Because, yeah, I like to buy things I like, but I'm also all for buying things I like that also help good causes at the same time. :)

(And yes, I did donate a bunch of things to the spring auctions. Not all of them are up this week. But you never know.......)

COME CHECK OUT THE AUCTIONS, PLEASE!

And if you leave me a note here or through email letting me know that you've checked out, bidded on, and/or won items, THANK YOU! and I'll try to send you something cool, or do something nice for you.