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One of the highlights of the Romance Writers of America “RWA” conference for me is the "Readers for Life" Literacy Autographing where last night more than 400 authors signed books, the proceeds of which will fund literacy charities. The authors sit at cloth-covered tables theatre style with copies of their books that have been donated by their publishers with pens poised, ready to sign --- and often with goodies like bookmarks, upcoming chapters, pens and candy to share. Readers make their way from aisle to aisle to meet favorite authors and explore new ones; all proceeds of the evening this year will be donated to ProLiteracy Worldwide, Read Orange County, and Literacy Volunteers—Huntington Valley. Since 1990, RWA has raised $716,000 to fight illiteracy.  

Our reader, Kathy Jund,  lives in Southern California. (You may remember her from her coverage of the L.A. Times Book Festival.) She attended Karin Slaughter's event at the Cerritos Library in Cerritos, California and in this blog interview she shares her thoughts on the presentation.

While this year I was unable to attend ThrillerFest as I was off to California for San Diego Comic-Con, I am very happy to share this terrific report from my son Greg and my other colleague, Maureen Linehan on this annual conference. By the way, both Maureen and Greg are in their twenties so I looked forward to reading  their thoughts and impressions on this event since they represent the future of publishing. Many of the conferences that I attend have hefty price tags that preclude younger fans from attending.

A panel originally planned to be a  conversation about  SHADOW SHOW:All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury  --- featuring new stories from Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, David Morrell,  Joe Hill,  Alice Hoffman, Audrey Niffenegger and others --- instead  became a celebration of Ray Bradbury’s life.

Ann Boles is the head librarian at Wickenburg Public Library in Wickenburg, Arizona. In June, she attended the John Irving presentation at ALA. In this interview, Ann talks about the event, when her love of Irving started, and what he said about his newest book, IN ONE PERSON. Irving has written nine international bestsellers and has won an Oscar for his adapted sceenplay of his novel, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES.