It is a great honor to announce the winners of the first-ever YART- Linworth Publishing/LMC TLA Conference Scholarship Stipend.

Julia Riley, Pflugerville Community Library
Shelli Nunciato, Grantham Academy for Engineering Library

Each winner receives a $500 scholarship stipend for TLA 2009 in Houston. YART is extremely grateful to Linworth Publishing/LMC for helping to make this exciting opportunity to aid YART librarians attending TLA possible.

Thank you to Paula Jackson, Linworth Publishing/LMC,
Pat Smith, Catherine Lee, Mary Ann Emerson and the super folks at TLA, and
the YART Executive Board for working overtime to get this award ready for TLA 2009.

Congratulations to our winners!

The Maverick Graphic Novel Reading Committee is in a Diamond Bookshelf article.

Check it out!
TLA Conference to Feature Graphic Novel Programming

We hope to see you at the Friday session "Mavericks of YA Graphic Novels" at 8 a.m.

By popular demand, we are once again interviewing our fantastic YART / TLA 2009 authors.

Read what our authors have to say in anticipation of TLA.

Our first interview is coming right up with more to follow soon!

Our very first author is Lorie Ann Grover. She will be speaking on the panel Readergirlz: Making Literacy Hip and Relevant for Todays Teens!

Mark your planner for: Thursday, April 2, 2-2:50 p.m.

Have you attended TLA before? If so, what advice do you have for new authors?
I never have attended TLA before, but I can't wait! I mean, you have a Tall Texans Desert Reception. At 6 feet tall, I should fit right in!

What is your preferred method of writing and why -- laptop, longhand, typewriter?
Usually I haul my laptop around, but if I'm stuck, I'll write on paper, even on the back of receipts, if necessary.

Favorite books of the past year:
Oooo. I loved Looks by Madeleine George. And then Justina Chen Headley's North of Beautiful which was just released!

Favorite books from your YA years:
I'd have to say my fav was House of Stairs and then Interstellar Pig. I loved introducing my daughters to both!

Finish this sentence. The perfect vacation is...
the one where everyone leaves the cottage until evening so that I can write in silence!

MySpace or Facebook?
Both! And Twitter, of course.

BBQ or Tex-Mex?
Someone show me! What's Tex-Mex, exactly?

Finish this sentence. Libraries are…
amazing because they are air-conditioned and smell really, really good. And they have books for free, free, free!

Do you have a blog, website, or other online presence that you would like to share with us?
Ha! Yes:
http://lorieanngrover.blogspot.com,
http://readertotz.blogspot.com,
http://readergirlz.blogspot.com,
www.myspace.com/lorieanngrover,
www.myspace.com/readergirlz,
http://groups.myspace.com/readergirlz,
www.readergirlz.com,
www.lorieanngrover.com,
http://twitter.com/lorieanngrover,
and you can find me on Facebook as well as a site for the readergirlz divas!

Sara Zarr, author of Story of a Girl (Little, Brown 2007) and Sweethearts (Little, Brown 2008), will present on the panel Tayshas: Hot High School Authors on Wednesday, 10:15-11:50 a.m. She joins authors Lisa Klein, John Green, and Melissa Marr.

Have you attended TLA before? If so, what advice do you have for new authors?
This will be my first. Until now, I've only jealously watched my friends go and have the time of their lives. So now I have high expectations!

What is your preferred method of writing and why -- laptop, longhand, typewriter?
Mostly the laptop or desktop. Though I do have a beautiful vintage electric typewriter that I bought after meeting Richard Peck and finding out he composes on a typewriter. He said he likes the page to feel like a page right away, and after writing about 100 pages of a first draft of my next book on the typewriter, I think he's onto to something. Also, the typewriter doesn't allow you to be a perfectionist, and perfectionism is a big obstacle to getting anything done. It's so much harder to fix what you think are "mistakes" on the typewriter - everything gets on the paper, and when you go back over it you might find that those mistakes are actually gold. Longhand works, too, though it's harder for me to keep up with my thoughts.

Favorite books of the past year
I'm a slow reader, and still going through my 2006 to-read pile. A couple I loved from 08 - The Way He Lived, a YA by Emily Wing Smith, which I thought was really beautiful and also funny, and Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri's latest collection of short stories. The title story is absolute perfection. Anyone who wants to write short stories should study it.

Favorite books from your YA years
Anything and everything Cormier. I Stay Near You by M.E. Kerr, L'Engle's series on the Austin Family, and one of my all-time favorite books that, to me, should be as well-known as any of the most famous books for young readers: All Together Now by Sue Ellen Bridgers. I don't know if it's really YA or if Bridgers even intended it to be a book for young readers, but I've read it at all ages and it's just masterful. I still think about scenes from that book at least once a week.

Finish this sentence. The perfect vacation is...
paid for by someone else.

MySpace or Facebook?
Facebook.

BBQ or Tex-Mex?
Tex-Mex, especially if I could have it with the sides that come with BBQ. Hush-puppy tacos?

Finish this sentence. Libraries are…
underfunded, considering that you can't truly have democracy without them.

Do you have a blog, website, or other online presence that you would like to share with us?
I blog regularly at my home page, www.sarazarr.com.

Author Cassandra Clare will be speaking on our spectacular YART kick-off program Women of YA Lit + 1 on Tuesday, March 31, 2:30-3:50 p.m. She joins Justine Larbalestier, Nancy Werlin, Margo Rabb and Patrick Jones.

1) Have you attended TLA before? If so, what advice do you have for new authors?

Answer: I’ve never attended.

2) What is your preferred method of writing and why – laptop, longhand, typewriter?

Answer: I prefer writing on a laptop, since my handwriting is so bad even I can’t read it.

3) Favorite books of the past year

Answer: I’m not a good person to ask, since the research project I’ve been doing all year means I can only read books set in the Victorian period. I loved Libba Bray’s The Sweet Far Thing, and Phillip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart books, which I hadn’t read before.

4) Favorite books from your YA years

Answer: Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, The Borderland books, War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, Robert Cormier, and I read everything by Lois Duncan and Christopher Pike

5) Finish this sentence. The perfect vacation is . . .

Answer: At least two months long!

6) MySpace or Facebook?

Answer: MySpace

7) BBQ or Tex-Mex?

Answer: BBQ

8) Finish this sentence. Libraries are . . .

Answer: The greatest places on earth!

9) Do you have a blog, website, or other online presence that you would like to share with us?

Answer: Sure. www.cassandraclare.com

Terry Moore, creator of Strangers In Paradise and Echo, will present on our final program for TLA. He joins Kean Soo, Svetlana Chmakova, and Derek Kirk Kim as Mavericks of YA Graphic Novels on Friday, 8-9:20 a.m.

Have you attended TLA before? If so, what advice do you have for new authors?

TM: Yes, I've been to TLA before. I recommend new authors bring YA friendly books. I seemed to meet an awful lot of YA librarians at TLA.

What is your preferred method of writing and why -- laptop, longhand, typewriter?

TM: I prefer writing on a bar napkin in Hawaii, but I make do with a laptop in Texas.

Favorite books of the past year

TM: From Hell, by Alan Moore (just got around to reading it)

Favorite books from your YA years

TM: The Mallory Towers series by Enid Blyton, Tin Tin by Herge, The James Bond series by Ian Fleming (read them all when I was 11 and spent the rest of the school year with one eyebrow raised)

Finish this sentence. The perfect vacation is...

TM: …a song by The Beach Boys about a place we can’t go.

MySpace or Facebook?

TM: Both.

BBQ or Tex-Mex?

TM: Both, please.

Finish this sentence. Libraries are…

TM: …where I keep all my favorite books.

Do you have a blog, website, or other online presence that you would like to share with us?

TM: Yes, thank you. Go to abstractstudiocomics.com. I can also be found on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Derek Kirk Kim, author of Good As Lily (Minx) and the forthcoming The Eternal Smile (First Second, with Gene Luen Yang), is the second of our panelists for the Mavericks of YA Graphic Novels on Friday at 8-9:20 a.m. See him with Kean Soo, Svetlana Chmakova, and Terry Moore.

1. Have you attended TLA before? If so, what advice do you have for new authors?

No, this is my first time. I'm very honored to be invited this year.

2. What is your preferred method of writing and why -- laptop, longhand, typewriter?

I use a laptop. I love the clickety-clack of the keyboard and the sensation of the keys popping up and down against my fingertips. Sometimes I'll just type for the experience even if I have nothing to write.

3. Favorite books of the past year

Well, I have so little free time I hardly ever read a book in the year that it's released. But a few books I happened to read this past year that I really enjoyed were Black Hole by Charles Burns, Sublife #1 by John Pham, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, Empire Park by Jason Shiga, assorted mini-comics by Jesse Reklaw, and Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. There were many others but those are the ones I'm remembering off the top of my head right now.

4. Favorite books from your YA years

The Catcher In The Rye, A Wrinkle In Time, Zot!, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Book of Three series, A Joy In The Morning, Elfquest, Wizard of Oz, Bone.

5. Finish this sentence. The perfect vacation is...

...a trip to TLA? ;)

6. MySpace or Facebook?

Neither.

7. BBQ or Tex-Mex?

Korean BBQ.

8. Finish this sentence. Libraries are…

...like the Internet without all the annoying banner ads and mean comments. More importantly, the human race wouldn't be where we are today without them. Libraries are a gift to you and me.

9. Do you have a blog, website, or other online presence that you would like to share with us?

Sure, lowbright.com.