Word Out 2010

Week 6 Prize Winners Drawn & Contacted

Winners for August 9 - 15 drawn & contacted.  Check your email!

Laid Editor, Shannon Boodram's Vlog

Shannon Boodram did an AMAZING vlog for Word Out about her book, Laid

Check it out here

Thank you Shannon!

Word Out Wrap Parties

We're getting near the end of summer and the end of this year's Word Out.  Quite a few Toronto Public Library branches are holding wrap-up parties with refreshments, prizes and more.  If there's one near you, you should definitely check it out!

Wrap Party Locations

Agincourt | Tuesday, August 17, 2010 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Bloor/Gladstone Branch | Saturday, August 28, 2010 | 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Barbara Frum | Thursday, August 26, 2010 | 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm

Malvern | Monday, August 30, 2010 | 2:00 pm -5:30 p.m.

Maria A. Shchuka | Wednesday, September 8, 2010 | 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Sanderson | Wednesday, August 25, 2010 | 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

S. Walter Stewart | Saturday, August 21, 2010 | 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Something noisy is going on at Albion branch...

Via my Albion contacts I am told something's going on there this weekend!

Time: Saturday August 21st, 4-8 PM
Place: Albion Library (in the parking lot)
What's Going On: The urbanNOISE festival, now in its fifth year.

2010 Young Voices Writers Conference- Registration Starts August 17!!!

Express Yourself: Work with professional writers on your creative writing endeavours, meet other youth who like to write, show your stuff at Open Mic, & get published in an instant anthology!

To register or for more information, please call 416-395-5784 or check out:

http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/yvconference

What a Wonderful World by Inio Asano - Graphic Novel

Do you dream about being a rock star?

Are you being chased by an evil-demon?

What's life like as a teen in Japan?

What a Wonderful World! is the first volume of Asano's two-part manga anthology. Each individual story in this manga is thought-provoking and intriguing. You can relate well to some characters while hating some others but each story is memorable and believable even if the ending may not be what you expected.

Random Book Prize Opportunity : Judging Books by Their Covers

4:00 pm, Monday August 23 - This contest is now closed.  Winners will be contacted shortly!

We're always told not to judge books by their covers.  But I think we do this all the time anyway.  Here's your chance to do so and win prizes!

We've got copies of all three of the books whose covers are below.  For a chance to win one of them, just tell us which book you'd most like to read based on the cover.

Laid and Relayed

Unlike my other posts, this one is slightly more serious, and I've been trying to figure how I'm going to blog about Laid: Young People's Experience with Sex in an Easy Access Culture all summer.

Talking about sex isn't easy or the most comfortable thing to do; but it ought to be.  (I mean, we are all a product of it.)  Blogging about sex, especially for work, add another dimension of pressure. I've edited this thing too much with thoughts of "Was that joke too risque?" or "am I being too graphic" But then again, in some ways, this is exactly what the editor of Laid , Shannon Boodram, was trying to get across.  Talking about sex shouldn't be as taboo as society makes it out to be.

What We Read Last Week, Part 7:

I finally finished Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan - fabulous book about love and friendship, starring two teenagers both named Will Grayson, and Tiny Cooper, "the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large".  I think this is probably the best YA novel I've read this summer.

Also read volume 12 of Robert Kirkman's Invincible--still the best "teen superheroes" comic going, in my opinion.

Sarah Ockler: Insights into Twenty Boy Summer

Sarah Ockler is the author of Twenty Boy Summer. The novel tells a touching story of love, grief and making the most of life. We had the opportunity to ask Sarah Ockler a few questions. Below are her responses…

Twenty Boy Summer is your first novel and is geared towards young adults. What made you decide to write for young adults?

I don't know that I decided to write for young adults as much as writing for young adults just... picked me! But I was officially encouraged to try YA by a writing instructor from Lighthouse Writers in Denver, Colorado. He'd read an essay I'd written about some trouble my best friend and I got into when we were fifteen, and he thought my writing had a great teen voice. I hadn't considered writing for teens before -- I was actually just wandering around, knowing I wanted to write but not sure where to start -- but Lighthouse had a YA novel class starting up, so I took a chance and signed up. After the first session, I'd found my writing heart. We read other contemporary YA authors like Sarah Dessen, Laurie Halse Anderson, Deb Caletti, and I knew then without a doubt that YA stories were the stories I needed to tell. Plus, I think I never really got over high school. Such a crazy, tumultuous time in life. I wrote Twenty Boy Summer in that YA novel class, and I've never looked back!