SUMMER SPRINT: Top Ten Tuesday

The Top Ten Tuesday tag is hosted by Jana, @ThatArtsyReader, and you can find the upcoming prompts here. Today’s prompt is “Book Festivals I want to go to/Authors I want to Meet.”

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We have been lucky enough to go to quite a few book festivals/events and meet a lot of our favorite authors, but obviously we have still have some authors we’d love to meet. This is especially true now, since COVID-19 caused events to be canceled left and right. We miss lurking in bookstores and geeking out with other book nerds.

Tree shares Bookish Events happening on her bookstagram if you would like to check it out here. Events are saved to her highlights. They are all virtual now, but virtual events are great too! Tree saw Nic Stone and A.S. King speak a few weeks ago which she would not have been able to do if the event was in person. So, there are some benefits to virtual events platform.

However, if you are attending virtual events PLEASE try to support the author/library/bookstore hosting the events in other ways too. Remember support does not have to be monetary. You can follow them, share their content, or engage with their posts.

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Both:

YALLfest: We are both avid YALLwest goers (2020 would have been our 5th year!) and dream of attending the original festival in South Carolina one day.

Texas Book Festival: This is book festival in Austin, TX centered around YA books. It sounds like a lot of fun and we wouldn’t mind visiting it ourselves.

BookCon:  This is one of the biggest east coast book festivals, and we would love to attend if we ever managed to be in New York in June.

Mariana Zapata: We are obsessed with her romances and would love to meet her. We’ve never heard of her touring for any of her books since she’s self-published, but we would love the opportunity to gush to the Slow Burn Queen in person.

Elizabeth Acevedo: If her narrations of her audiobooks say anything, it’s that hearing her perform her poetry live would be amazing. She also just seem like a really cool person.

Brittany Cooper: We recently finished a book club read of Eloquent Rage and we are both a little in awe of how passionate, knowledgeable, and awesome Brittany Cooper is. We can’t wait til she publishes more books, and we might even go hunting for her old academic papers in the mean time. We would both love to hear her speak in person!

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Bree:

Holly Black: Y’all already know I’m obsessed with The Folk of the Air series and I would flip if I got the chance to meet Holly Black. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to visit California often on her book tours. So, when in-person events are back, it’s inevitable that I will travel to another state to meet her.

Leigh Bardugo: I would like to re-meet Leigh now that I’m properly obsessed with her books. I went along with Tree to her signing at the LA Times Festival of Books a few years ago and got my [unread] copy of Six of Crows signed. Now I’ve devoured that duology and Ninth House twice, so I can actually bask in the glory of whatever future book info she drops.

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Tree:

Taylor Jenkins Reid: I met her at an event, but she was promoting someone else’s book (who I also love so it’s fine) but I would like to hear her speak more about her books you know? My friend and I took a photo with her BUT THE GIRL WHO TOOK IT DID NOT REALLY TAKE IT AND WE DID NOT GET A PHOTO WITH HER I try not to be bitter about it, but low key still sad about it.

Nic Stone: I have heard her speak virtually many times, but would love to get my books signed by her. Plus, I always learn so much when she speaks that I would love to see her talk anytime I could.

Who would you like to meet? Where would you like to go?

xoxo, Bree & Tree