YALC 2019, the event from the perspective of a book blogger

YALC is by far my favourite event of the year, it stands for Young Adult Literature Convention and it is the last weekend of every July. It is basically three days of book buying, meeting authors and catching up with bookish friends!

I’m so sad YALC is over, so the best thing to do right now is to jump into writing down my thoughts and feelings about the event.

YALC Day One, Friday

Friday was by far the most exciting day at YALC for me. Not only was I able to see everyone again that I hadn’t seen since last year, but I was also talking on a panel at a workshop and it was the UKYA Blogging Awards in the evening.

The moment the lift doors open and you see the stalls and stalls of books is like no other. I love the excitement building up to get inside the venue and run to the ARC giveaway you’re dying to head to. After waiting outside in the rain with Connie from Connie Reads, I was even keener to get inside this year!

My first choice of a book to run to was The Dragon Republic, the epic sequel to The Poppy War, one of my favourite books. As soon as I’d secured an early release copy of this book, I took a wander around the floor and checked out all of the stands. Thanks to Jenn from Jenniely, I already had a list of the ARCs I wanted to try and find so I had those jotted down on my phone. This year YALC did a lot of raffles for the ARCs, which was fair to everyone as you could take your time getting a ticket and check the winners on Twitter later that day.

The ARCs I wanted to get were: Infinity Son, Ten Thousand Doors of January, Slay, Into the Crooked Place and Yes, No Maybe. Out of those, I got none! But that’s okay because I found a lot of other awesome books I can’t wait to read.

I attended a workshop hosted by Literary Galaxy (Jenn), to make my very own bookmark. I have a great deal of admiration for Jenn for being able to do something so fiddly! At 1pm it was time for my workshop as part of the YA Shot, I was talking about Blogging Tips with Imi from imireviewsbooks and Emily from ashortbooklover. I loved being on the panel with both of these ladies, I had great fun answering all of the questions.

In the evening it was the UKYA Blogging Awards, where I somehow managed to win the Most Inspirational award! There’s more about that amazing experience here.

YALC Day Two, Saturday

Saturday is always the busiest day at YALC, for me it was the day where I had the most amount of books with me. I was planning to meet Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon and Jim Kay, so I had all of the big books with me! Meeting these authors and illustrators was just amazing, there’s nothing like being able to thank someone for writing a story you adored. I somehow managed to get near the front for both Victoria Schwab and Samantha Shannon’s signings, and it was a pleasure to speak to them and tell them how much I love their writing.

So I mainly spent Saturday getting up and down for signings. Which makes me want to mention the support for anyone with any back issues at this event. I know accessibility for others is an issue, but my experience is with back pain, so I wanted to touch on this. In previous years, the lack of seating has been an issue for me at YALC. I emailed a lot this year to see what would be done this year to support our backs and the responses were quite non-committal. Seeing the ‘chill-out zone’, I can see why! There were a handful of inflatable chairs, that had been removed by Saturday because they were all deflated. There was also a couple of chairs, mostly always in use, which left the wall as back support. I’d love to see more chairs at an event like this, it would make it so much easier when I’m spending the weekend with a portable library on my back. Enough of my rant though.

I was so tired when I arrived home from Saturday, a fulfilling but knackering day!

YALC Day Three, Sunday

Sunday, the final day of YALC, the day of book reductions and goodbyes. I was very restrained on Sunday and only picked up two books and had two to get signed by Anna James and Bex Hogan, both of whom were lovely. I also attended a couple of talks in the Agent Arena about getting published, which turned out to be very beneficial so I’m really glad I went along.

I was also able to take part in a giant group selfie of all of the members of our UKYA Discord Chat by the YALC sign. I love this lot so much, they are the best, so I’m really glad we were able to get a photo all together.

I took a quick trip down to the Comic-Con floor on Sunday too, I say quick, it was about 20 minutes before I couldn’t take the heat down there. But I did do some celebrity spotting near the green room for a while on the YALC floor. It seems YALC is getting quite the reputation for celebrities just walking through the floor. Over the weekend I’ve seen the likes of Jason Mamoa, Jason Isaacs, Tom Felton, Emilie de Ravin and Matthew Lillard (who gave me a high five), from a distance.

I was coming down with quite the cold by the end of the Sunday, so I headed out at around 4pm to go back home, 20 books heavier.

My favourite parts of YALC 2019

• Seeing my bookish friends, some of which I hadn’t seen since last year
• Talking on a panel about blogging and sharing my passion
• Winning the Most Inspirational Blogger Award
• Meeting new faces and followers of my blog
• Fangirling over an early release of The Dragon Republic
• Taking funny photos of Lauren (FictionTea) at the FairyLoot booth
• Going out for dinner every evening with friends
• Getting hyped about books and feeling really motivated to read LOADS!

Thank you to everyone who made my YALC special!