Cambridge Literary Festival

Yesterday, I was lucky to attend the Cambridge Literary Festival which, funny enough, was held in Cambridge. There was a great line-up of authors, but for me, the winners were Helen Moss and Chris Priestley. 

 
I know Helen from the SCBWI group I belong to so it was great to be able to go along and see her in action. I liked how interactive her talk was, especially with the amount of young people in there. The children were so involved and many had read Helen's mystery adventure books and had clearly loved them. I scribbled throughout the session, making notes for what could be changed in my own author talks. I shall be stealing a few ideas, that's for sure. After the session there was a long queue waiting for books to be signed. An inspring event.

My second event was with the Master of Horror, Chris Priestley, who despite being unwell, managed to set a chilling tone to the final children's session of the festival. It was great to hear about his writing background and that he had been an illustrator. There were lots of young people here too, eager to listen to Chris reading from his book, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror. As he ended there were more than a few gasps from the audience. I love this type of horror and Chris' talk made me realise that I need to be more daring in what I write and not to underestimate what children can take in books. A great event.