Saturday, February 25, 2012

Georgia is Peachy!

Yesterday, about 40 writers joined me at a pre-conference intensive for the Georgia Spring Mingle. Aside from the fact that I over-slept, waking up 45 minutes before the workshop, we had a great day. People said they got good stuff to use when they went back home and every single one of the attendees came up with a plan to keep up the momentum from the day. Woo-hoo!

This morning, the conference itself kicked off with me giving the keynote. I was a little stressed over some techno-glitches but thanks to the calm presence of assistant RA Heather Montgomery and the help of my angel Elizabeth Dulemba, all was well. I think I may have to move to Atlanta as everyone takes such good care of me here!

RA Claudia Pearson asked if I would post the titles I referenced in my talk and I am more than happy to do that here:

Books about writing:
Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Mystery and Manners, by Flannery O'Connor
Making the Literary Life, by Carolyn See
Gates of Excellence, by Katherine Paterson
Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott

Books to stimulate your thinking:
Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman
The Lost Art of Walking, by Geoff Nicholson

Fiction:
A Mouse and His Child, by Russell Hoban
Boxes for Katje, Candace Fleming
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda AND Horton Halfpott, by Tom Angleberger
Sold, by Patricia McCormick
Feed, by M.T. Anderson
Unwind, by Neal Schusterman
How to Steal a Dog, by Barbara O'Connor
anything by my hero Karen Cushman
Hound Dog True, by Linda Urban
The Trouble with May Amelia, Jennifer Holm

Now, you Georgia peaches have to do me a favor in return: keep me posted on your progress!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

6 comments:

  1. I'm jealous. I adore Georgia. Going down there in March. And, hey, your book choices are really peachy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kirby- everyone has raved about you all weekend. THANK YOU for coming over to this side of the country and making it even more peachy!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Talk about peachy. You should have been a southerner, Kirby. You are such a gracious lady. I really enjoyed your keynote and the pre-conference intensive. I'm all on fire to go at my novel and fill it with wonderful word choices and metaphors written from the perspective of my POV character.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kirby: Thanks again for sharing your nuggets of wisdom at Spring Mingle this weekend. I just downloaded "Hattie Big Sky" on Kindle and can't put it down. I was curious what the youngest reader of "Hattie" would be as I see it's classified as a YA.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks, you GA (and MS and AL!) peaches for all those nice words. Sharna-- I know there are kids as young as 8 (and as old as 96!) who have read Hattie but I personally think 8's too young. 4th grade and up seems perfect to me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I agree with Sally. I think you must have some peach in you! :) e

    ReplyDelete