Libraries offer resources to local authors

Is the Great American Novel percolating in your head?

Finally ready to start that memoir so your children and grandchildren will know your story?

There are a lot of reasons to sit down and write, but it can be really hard to get started. What if there were tools that could make it easier to write, edit, and maybe even publish your writing? And what if these tools were free and easily available?

Enter inkie.org, a suite of software available to everyone in the state of Illinois courtesy of Illinois libraries including yours.

You know that libraries are the places to find great stories, but they have also become places to create great stories. Through a partnership between Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS) and a nonprofit called BiblioLabs, inkie.org was developed to make it easier for indie and self-publishing writers to create their writing and, if desired, share their work through an online platform available to library users for electronic checkout. Inkie.org also has a portal through which self-published novels may be entered in the Soon to Be Famous (STBF) Illinois Author Project Annual Contest. This contest, now in its eighth year, recognized and promotes high-quality self-published fiction from Illinois authors.

To learn more about inkie.org and how it can help writers, you may attend a free, virtual demonstration of the software led by Anna Behm, E-Contest Specialist at RAILS, presented by the Clarendon Hills Library on Thursday, February 10 at 7 pm. Register for this virtual program at clarendonhillslibrary.org.