Malinda Lo

Last weekend I attended the YALSA Literature Symposium in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The theme was Beyond Good Intentions: Diversity, Literature, and Teens, and I had a fantastic time meeting tons of YA librarians (you are a lively bunch to say the least!) and hanging out with fellow authors.

On Friday I attended the preconference organized by Michael Cart and Christine Jenkins, On Beyond Stonewall, in which Michael and Christine walked everyone through 50 years of LGBT YA fiction! It was definitely an education. I was on a panel with YA authors Lauren Bjorkman, Kirstin Cronn-Mills, and Megan Frazer, and I spoke about moving beyond heteronormativity. Sometime I may in fact turn that talk into a blog post. For now, I’ll mention that I created a page on my website that includes links to various things we authors thought were useful in considering the future (OK, and the present) of LGBT YA fiction.

Friday night, Lauren, Kirstin, Megan, Alexandra Diaz and I had a panel talk/book signing at Alamosa Books, which is a wonderful children’s bookstore in Albuquerque. Here we are:

L to R: Me, Lauren Bjorkman, Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Alexandra Diaz, Megan Frazer

It’s really a good thing I don’t live in Albuquerque, because I would spend way too much time and money at Alamosa Books! If you’re ever in the area, you should definitely check it out.

On Saturday, I started the morning by moderating a panel called Commercial Success and Diversity: Are Both Possible, or Are They a Contradiction in Terms? The panelists were Neesha Meminger, Cynthea Liu, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. We spent a bunch of time talking about the expectations that come with writing and publishing books that include non-white characters — from editors asking us to make things “more Chinese” or “more black,” to the problems of working with stock photography in designing book covers.

These kinds of discussions are so rarely had in person. I think it was a really valuable conversation, and I hope that the librarians present got some good takeaways from it in terms of how to talk about diverse books with teen readers. Gbemi has also uploaded a copy of her handout, Resources for Multicultural Literature, to her website.

Lest you think that librarians (and authors) are an entirely serious bunch (why would you think that?), here’s what happened after that panel:

LIBRARIAN: Malinda! I loved your book! Will you sign me?
MALINDA: Uh, sure. If you have a pen, I’ll sign you!
[brief pause as librarian goes to find a pen]
LIBRARIAN: Here is a pen!
MALINDA: Oh, but this is a ball point pen, it’ll hurt.
LIBRARIAN: Don’t be like Kristin Cashore! Press hard! I have tattoos.

I will sign pretty much anything.

A trip to a conference (or anywhere, really) wouldn’t be complete without some food photos! Here’s my Saturday lunch from the Japanese Kitchen, which was right across from the conference hotel. Yummy!

Lunch!

Saturday night I went out to dinner with author friends. The food photos turned out too blurry, but luckily the photo of us people turned out well. Here we are in the hotel before heading out:

Clockwise, from left: Neesha Meminger, Kirstin Cronn-Mills, me, Megan Frazer, Lauren Bjorkman, Cynthea Liu, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich

In a nice end to the weekend, Sunday morning I picked up a copy of the New York Times, where Ash got a shout-out in this article about children’s books based on Grimms’ fairy tales.

Now that YALSA’s over, I only have one more event in 2010, NCTE/ALAN in Orlando right before Thanksgiving. And then … nothing until Huntress is published in April. I will be spending that time sitting at home, writing. I can’t wait!