by Alex Bandong
It was the best of times, it was not a Tale of Two Cities. Thankfully.
Right before Thanksgiving break, four English teachers, four other upper schoolers and I traveled to YALLFest. I’m still not 100% sure what YALLFest stands for, but whenever people asked, I told them it was a young adult literature…festival. YALLFest was a weekend full of fun that united fangirls (and fanboys) to meet authors, get books signed and go to panels. It was a two day event (well, one and a half), and we left school Friday morning and drove back Sunday afternoon. YALLFest gave me the opportunity to visit a cool place I’d never been to before – Charleston, South Carolina. YALLFest takes place in Downtown Charleston so it allows for a wide range of stores and restaurants to eat at and explore. Starting Friday, events took place almost every hour until 6 pm, and authors signed books in various places arou The first day, I was only able to go to one author signing – Jenny Han. It was amazing and strange at the same time to see the author of books I loved sitting right before me. It’s weird to think about the fact that these authors who come to YALLFest are just ordinary people just like us, and it was funny watching them in the panels. I went to a panel called Contemporary vs Light: the authors featured in the panel talked about each of their own individual books and answered questions that anybody in the room had. It was interesting, as a reader of these authors’ books, to hear their personalities out loud instead of trying to figure it out from their writing. Another panel I went to was called “All the Feels” and it was super funny and relatable. While I don’t exactly remember what the authors talked about, I do remember Lauren Oliver, who hosted the panel, was very funny. One other panel I went to was a spotlight on Eoin Colfer, which was bit more middle grade. My main reasoning for attending that panel was so I could tell the middle schoolers about it in the middle school club I’m leading with the four other upper schoolers I went to YALLFest with called Reading and Writing Fanatics.
Reading and Writing Fanatics is a middle school club led by six now qualified high school students (our training was YALLFest) who are fans of reading and writing. I have gone to two meetings so far, and in them we had a white elephant book swap and used a plot generator to generate funny plots for stories. I’ve enjoyed interacting with middle schoolers and connecting the middle and upper school through this club. Overall, I really enjoyed YALLFest and the chance to meet and befriend four other high schoolers, as well as our car rides. Thanks to you guys, I started listening to Hamilton! YALLFest was a great weekend and I’m planning to go next year.