Jared Austin

Almost Famous: Building A Brand

“The Writer vs Author: Building a YA Brand” panel in Marriott A707, part of the YA Literature track on Sunday, Sep 3, 2023 at 1:00 PM, featured authors Sean Fletcher, A.J. Hartley, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Mari Mancusi, with moderator Natalie Simpson. Simpson started off the panel asking about the differences between writing when you’re learning to write before you’ve ever… Read more →

Things That Go Bump in the Night: Creating Thrills and Chills in YA

Things That Go Bump in the Night: Creating Thrills and Chills in YA

The “Thrills and Chills in YA” panel took place Saturday at 5:30PM in Marriott A707 on the YA track. Sarah Brown served as the panel moderator, with speakers Kaitlin Bevis, Jay Boyce, Claudia Gray, A.J. Hartley, and DL Wainwright. The authors started off by sharing their favorite type of thriller read, which was varied between supernatural and thriller/suspense, with Gray… Read more →

Mapping a Zombie Outbreak: It’s for Science!

Mapping a Zombie Outbreak: It’s for Science!

Charlie Kaufman, a geographer for the U.S. Army Corps in Charleston, SC, gave a highly amusing and entertaining presentation about using the Geographic Information System (GIS) to map a zombie outbreak. Charlie used GIS—a tool to create, manage, analyze, and map all sorts of data—to show a zombie outbreak that began on the College of Charleston and spread outward until… Read more →

Are There Boundaries in YA Today? It Depends on Your Readers

Are There Boundaries in YA Today? It Depends on Your Readers

The “YA Today: Are There Boundaries? What Are They?” panel took place in the Writer’s Track in the Hyatt Embassy at 11:30AM Saturday morning. The panelists were authors Jay Boyce, Katie Cross, Claudia Gray, Isabelle Hardesty, A.J. Hartley, and L.H. Nicole. Hardesty, as moderator, started things off by asking the panelists what modern kids are looking for in a book?… Read more →

Building a Generation Ship? It’s a Bad Idea!

A generation ship is an interstellar ship designed to travel at sub-light speed, taking hundreds or thousands of years to reach nearby starts. According to the panelists of the “Let’s Build a Generation Ship!” panel, the technical difficulties, not to mention the complications of human psychology, would leave such a voyage riddled with risk. This thought-provoking panel on the Science… Read more →