The Austin Teen Book Festival, taking place on October 1st, 2011 10am – 5pm at the Palmer Events Center, is a FREE festival with the mission of connecting teens with authors of books for teens. Panels of authors will discuss a wide variety of topics, sign their books, and celebrate all things teen fiction.
To give you a taste of what to expect at the ATBF, we’ve invited some of the panelists to write about their panel here on the BP blog. This week’s guest blogger is Margo Raab, who is will appear on the Pen Fatales panel.
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By Margo Raab
A femme fatale (according to Wikipedia) is “a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensare her lovers in a bond of irresistible desire.”
A Pen Fatale is a group of four mysterious and fabulous YA authors whose charms ensnare their readers in bonds of irresistible book-love. We’re lucky to be hosting the Pen Fatales at the Austin Teen Book Festival—here is a sample of the charms of each author’s new book:
Mary Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox is one of my favorite books—one of those rare novels that makes you keep thinking about the characters, their struggles, and the big questions they raise about life and death, long after you finish reading. The Fox Inheritance continues the story of Jenna, Kara and Locke, and is another beautifully written, unforgettable page-turner.
Have you ever felt that by some unfair stroke of the universe, things just don’t go your way? After a string of disasters, Brooklyn Pierce takes matters into her own hands and lets her blog readers make big decisions about her life. Jessica Brody’s My Life Undecided made me laugh out loud and consider polling the web to answer my life’s big questions.
For fans of Alyson Noel’s best-selling Immortals series, Ever’s little sister Riley has always been a special character, and now she stars in her own books. In Radiance, the first book in the series, Riley’s voice grabs you from page one and doesn’t let go: “Most people think that death is the end…But those people are wrong. Dead wrong. And I should know. I died almost a year ago.” Readers will be happy to know that Shimmer and Dreamland, two more installments of Riley’s story, are available now, too.
In All These Things I’ve Done Gabrielle Zevin transports us to New York City in the year 2083, where chocolate and coffee (sometimes spiked with Prozac) are illegal, and paper and water are scarce. I was born and raised in New York City, and chocolate and coffee are two of my favorite things, so needless to say I was immediately drawn into this world. Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old narrator, is the daughter of a black-market chocolatier, and when she falls in love with the son of the assistant D.A., this dystopian Romeo and Juliet was impossible to put down.
Come meet the Pen Fatales at the Austin Teen Book Festival, and hear their thoughts on love, life, death—and chocolate.
Margo Rabb is the author of the novel Cure for Heartbreak, which received four starred reviews, won the Teddy Book Award, and was named one of the best YA books of the year by Kirkus and Booklist. Her fiction and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope, Seventeen, One Story, Best New American Voices, and elsewhere, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio. She received grand prize in the Zoetrope fiction contest, first prize in The Atlantic Monthly fiction contest, first prize in the American Fiction contest, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. Her new YA novel will be published by Delacorte in early 2013. Visit her online at http://www.margorabb.com.
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