Sunday, June 1, 2014

LSU Young Adult Literature Conference in Baton Rouge - Starting a New Tradition of Celebrating The Books Kids Read

I have landed in Baton Rouge, brought my 55 pound suitcase (stacked with John Dau and Martha Akech's Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan and other texts), and carted materials for a weeklong seminar on exploring refugee stories in young adult literature.

The campus is buzzing with the LSU baseball game against Houston, so my housing was delayed. As a result, I ended up at a Marriot where I found a running trail and then ended up by a pool (it's around 85 degrees here). I then went out for cajun shrimp and crawfish tacos before calling it a night.

The highlight from yesterday was being bumped up to first class and sitting next to a real estate dude from NYC who was working between finalizing a deal with Sigourney Weaver and settling the housing of a sister who had flipped to the other side of sanity and needed treatment - needless to say, it made for interesting conversation. And finally, FINALLY, they have WiFi up in the air and 30-minutes of it was free to me in 1st class...so much for getting away from being connected.

Today, I need to check in to the LSU conference and cosponsor a dinner for all presenters. I also need to get on top of my two events: A Responsibility To Citizenship: Deconstructing Violence in Young Adult Literature and Questioning 'the What' of Refugee Narratives: Framing Global Awareness in Young Adult Literature I look forward to meeting the librarians, teachers, graduate students, authors, and academics who are in attendance.

More importantly, I look forward to piecing together the writing I've been trying to articulate over the last few years with very limited time to write.

This is my holiday - a vacation - and I'm looking forward to having this week to think creatively and intelligently about the power of using these texts with others. First, however, I need to tame my stomach from the spiciness of the fish tacos - ouch, they like their fire!

and, wow, it's June 1st already.

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