For the next Talking About YALC installment, the supersonic Katherine Woodfine chats to POP about her personal YALC highlights, Malorie Blackman and the behind-the-scenes dream team. Enjoy!
Now that the dust has settled on the brilliantly successful first ever YALC, how does it feel to have been part of such a well-received event
Amazing! We were absolutely delighted by the amazing level of enthusiasm for YALC, and it has been brilliant hearing everyone’s feedback. What we really wanted to do was to reach people who might not normally attend a traditional literature event, and create a real buzz around books for young adults – and I think this is something we all felt we definitely achieved.
There’s a lot we can learn from this event, and a lot we can improve if we’re able to continue it in future, but overall it was a great success, and a really special and memorable experience.
There was an amazing cast of authors at YALC, and there must have been so many people helping behind the scenes, too – how did you bring together your YALC dream team?
We were so lucky to have such brilliant support for YALC – they really were a dream team.
A group of the UK’s YA publishers had already had some initial conversations about the event before we got involved, so they were really enthusiastic from the get-go. All of the publishers were incredibly supportive throughout, but I must particularly mention the YALC publisher working group - a small group of publicists who volunteered to get more involved in helping to take the event forward. Their advice and support was invaluable in planning the event and their practical support during the weekend itself was amazing – they were always on hand to pitch in, and at one point even fed me pizza when I was about to drop! I definitely wouldn’t have been standing by the end of the weekend if it wasn’t for them. It was great working with them - I like to think of us a bit like The Avengers.
Showmasters, who run the London Film and Comic Con, were also hugely supportive of the event from the start, and their team of staff worked incredibly hard to make YALC a success. The Waterstones team was brilliant too: Waterstones High Street Kensington, who provided our bookshop, have been working with London Film and Comic Con for a while, so they really knew their stuff. They worked tirelessly through the weekend, and we couldn’t have done it without them. We also had 20 brilliant volunteers from Booktrust who gave up some of their weekend to come down, don a YALC t-shirt, and pitch in. And I also must mention our fantastic Children’s Laureate PR agency Riot Communications, who did such an amazing job on press for the event.
Finally, Malorie herself was, of course as always, an utter delight to work with, and the perfect person to head up the event. The support and enthusiasm from all authors involved was brilliant – they all really got into the spirit of YALC, and seemed to have a ball!
When YALC was in the early stages of planning, did you predict that the event would be big?
I think we always knew it was an ambitious project – but it definitely grew beyond our original vision. So many authors and publishers were keen to be involved, and so many great opportunities came up that we had to expand our initial plans.
What were your personal YALC highlights?
There were honestly so many – it’s impossible to choose. Seeing the sheer numbers of young people who came, all the amazing cosplayers, trending on Twitter for three days, getting to try on James Dawson’s Queen of Teen crown in the Green Room . . . it was all brilliant. But one moment that really stands out in my mind is when the doors were first opened on the Friday evening: immediately lots of people surged over to the Book Zone, and one girl picked up a book and settled herself straight down to read. I think that was the magic moment that I realised "this is actually going to work!"
What do you think makes YA a unique form of writing, with such wide appeal?
That’s an interesting question: I think it’s partly that "YA" itself is actually such a wide category. Books that we describe as "YA" deal with all kinds of topics, across all kinds of genres. They’re not even necessarily books "about" young people, but often about the issues and questions that are of interest to young people – like coming to terms with your identity, overcoming challenges, falling in love – that are in fact hugely relevant to all of us, whatever our age.
I also think it’s because of the quality of our YA publishing – we have so many brilliant authors writing for young people. Lots of the YA writing I read is very high quality, and isn’t afraid to take risks, and I think that’s ultimately a big part of where its appeal lies.
There were so many positive comments about YALC on social networks and across the media. How does it feel to be supported so avidly by fans of YA as well as publishers and the press?
Really brilliant - it was so important to us that this event was for young people themselves, and not just for the industry. One of my favourite things about the whole event was seeing how excited people were, both during the weekend itself and in the run-up. It certainly wouldn’t have been what it was without all the support and enthusiasm of the YA fans and book bloggers, who really got behind the event from the start.
I also loved seeing the positive reactions from those who weren’t super keen readers – people who’d perhaps come to LFCC for the films, TV or gaming elements, but who were really excited when they realised that authors like Malorie Blackman or Derek Landy were there, and that they could meet them and have books signed. The whole reason we wanted to hold the event at a venue like LFCC is so that we could showcase just how exciting YA is to new audiences, as well as the existing community, so it was great to see that in action.
Where does YALC go from here?
We’re currently evaluating the project and talking to all the partners involved about how we could take it forward. There’s a huge amount of enthusiasm for continuing it as an annual event from all concerned – so watch this space!
Describe YALC 2014 in five words or phrases
I thought I’d go off piste here and describe it with five of my favourite pictures instead
1. Holly Smale gets a selfie with a reader
2. Lucy Saxon surrounded by excited fans at the book signing
3. Our YALC book wall. This was such a last minute burst of inspiration. We knew we wanted to display lots of books, so people could look at them, but I couldn’t work out quite how to make it work. Then suddenly I had a vision of lots of coloured ribbons . . . and this was the result
4. Even Chewbacca came along to YALC
5. Malorie meeting some of the kids who came along to the event thanks to bursaries from the Siobhan Dowd Trust
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