NoVa TEEN Book Festival 2015 Was a Great Success!

Wow! That’s the best word to describe the second annual NoVa TEEN Book Festival. We knew the response would be great, but what we got was beyond anything we’d imagined. Though the snow threw off plans for visits by the authors to local schools, we had a great turnout as the festival hosted 450 attendees, including readers from DE and NC! For the Nova TEEN Book Festival’s inaugural event in 2014, over 300 readers attended and we expect even more in 2016 as we look to extend out our partnerships into the District of Columbia.

NoVa TEEN Book Festival was hosted by One More Page Books, Arlington Public Library, Fairfax County Public Library, and Arlington Public Schools with sponsorship from Falls Church City Public Schools, George Mason University’s Fall for the Book and many local businesses: ZPizza, Lost Dog Café, Joe’s Place Pizza & Pasta, Writeopia Lab, and Giant Squid Books.

The festival featured 21 authors in four main event panels and 16 smaller Q&A-driven breakout sessions; the event closed out with a keynote speech from critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author Matt de la Peña, whose latest release is “The Living.”

The authors in attendance included: Martina Boone (Compulsion), Tracy Clark (Deviate: The Light Key Trilogy #2), Seth Fishman (The Dark Water: The Well’s End #2), Maggie Hall (The Conspiracy of Us), Rachel Hawkins (Rebel Belle), Shaun Hutchinson (The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley), Lydia Kang (Catalyst: Control #2), Alethea Kontis (Dearest: Woodcutter Sisters #3), Jessica Khoury (Kalahari), Melissa Marr (Made for You), Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places), Sara Raasch (Snow Like Ashes), Jason Reynolds (The Boy in the Black Suit), Morgan Rhodes (Gathering Darkness: Falling Kingdoms #3), Marie Rutkoski (The Winner’s Crime), Kristen Simmons (The Glass Arrow), Kat Spears (Sway), Robin Talley (Lies We Tell Ourselves), Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes), and Jon Skovron (Man Made Boy) acting as Master of Ceremony.

Planning for the second NoVa TEEN Book Festival began almost a year ago in July 2014. NoVa TEEN is the brainchild of author and One More Page bookseller Danielle Ellison and was created to celebrate Young Adult literature by bringing together YA authors and fans for a day long festival filled with panel discussions and breakout sessions.
When asked why Ms. Ellison conceived of NoVa TEEN, she replies: “My goal in this event has always been one person. If one person came who wouldn’t have usually come. If one person was inspired. If one person learned about an author or a book they didn’t know about before. If one person discovered a book or an author that had the power to impact. If one person’s experience changed their life in some infinitely small way. If one person left there different in any way, then we have done our job.”

For further insight into why NoVa TEEN exists, please visit Ms. Ellison’s blog post: https://danielleellison.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/why-the-nova-teen-book-...

We can’t wait until the third annual NoVa TEEN Book Festival – which will be held on April 9th, 2016 at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington. In the meantime, find out more about NoVa Teen 2015 at: http://novateenbookfestival.tumblr.com/