Bring YA to PA

I had the most amazing time at the PAYA Festival in West Chester, PA, which is actually where I live!  It was pretty cool to have all of these awesome authors and bloggers in my town.  Here's a recap of the event.

A bunch of us, including some amazing authors, decided to go to lunch in West Chester at Penn's Table before the event, which, by the way, is a great restaurant for breakfast. I definitely plan on going again!  It was me, Jamie from The Perpetual Page-turner, Anne from Potter, Percy and I (as well as her awesome mom, Veronica), Katelyn from The Bookshelf Sophisticate, Laura and Michelle from Borders Exton and authors Cyn Balog, Shelena Shorts, and Jennifer Murgia.   It was so great to get to know everyone and talk books, which I don't get to do often unless I'm talking to teenagers and that's at work!

Katelyn, Jennifer, Cyn, me, Shelena and Jamie at PAYA

After lunch, we headed back to the event and then the signings started.  Here are all the authors that attended:  Josh Berk (The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin), Amy Brecount White (Forget-Her-Nots), Stephanie Kuehnert (I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, Ballads of Suburbia) Jon Skovron (Struts and Frets), Shannon Delany (13 to Life), Jeri Smith-Ready (Shade, WVMP series, Aspect of the Crow trilogy), Meg Medina (Milagros: Girl from Away), Chelsea Swiggett (Rae), Kieryn Nicolas (Rain), Dianne Salerni (We Hear the Dead), Jennifer Hubbard (The Secret Year), Christine Marciniak (When Mike Kissed Emma), Jennifer Murgia (Angel Star), Shelena Shorts (The Pace series), Ellen Jensen Abbott (Watersmeet), Holly Nicole Hoxter (The Snowball Effect), Andrew Auseon (Freak Magnet), and Cyn Balog (Fairy Tale, Sleepless).

What is so crazy is that this event was organized by Harmony from Harmony Book Reviews and she is only a high school student. Major kudos to her! I was so impressed.  They even had writing workshops at this event and my cousin, Christopher, attended and seemed to really like the class.  Katelyn, Jamie and I got so many books signed and thankfully, they took many photos. I forgot my camera at home. (UGH!)  So, I will be "borrowing" all of their photos to share with you! It was so nice to get books signed in a relaxed manner without the long lines and the one million rules.

Jamie, Steph, James, Anne, Jenn,
me and Kristi

Afterwards, I stayed around to socialize with everyone including Jenn from Book Crazy and Steph from Steph Su Reads. How nice are they in person?!  I also met James from Book Chic and Caitlin from Scarrlet Reader as well as Kristi from The Story Siren.  Kristi is so nice and hilarious.  For me, meeting her was like meeting one of the authors since she's such an incredible blogger!


I made so many connections, because of this event and met so many amazing people. I am very glad I went and I look forward to next year!  And what warms my heart about this whole thing is the fact this event raised money for PA libraries.  What could be better than that?