Author meets bald butt prairies ... again

As opposed to what? ... a dead bee hive?!

To get to the Young Alberta Book Society's (YABS) annual general meeting/professional development last year, I had to drive through a blinding freak May snowstorm. I chronicled my adventure here (and bemoaned the high risk life of a children's author).


This year it wasn't nearly as bad. Neither torrential rain, nor wind, nor fog kept a group of dedicated children's authors, illustrators and performers from travelling across the bald butt prairies to Red Deer for the meeting. 


YABS is dedicated to fostering literacy and a love of reading among young people in Alberta by providing access to the province's literary artists and their work through subsidized touring programs, youth writing camps and a whole lot more.  If you are a teacher, librarian, resource worker, literary artist or kid who likes to write - check out what YABS has for you. 

The meeting was held at the Kerry Wood Nature Centre so the surrounding (soaked) natural area could provide inspiration. 


We chatted, ate, talked touring, school visits, fundraising, shared experiences with various aspects of the publishing industry, talked about the future of publishing, weather stories, and even talked about finances (try to get writers to talk about numbers, just try). 

Trust a children's author to crawl into a giant fake tree!
Here's author Natasha Deen reading Joan Marie Galat's Dot to Dot in the Sky. 

It was a good day, I learned a lot, and the weather on the way home didn't disappoint. My hands were formed into claws by the time I got home, from clutching the steering wheel trying to keep my car on the road despite the blinding rain and high winds. 


Luckily, I had a cassette tape recorded in the1980s, from Simon and Garfunkel's concert in Central Park, to keep me company as my car literally flew over the rain slicked highway. Unluckily, since the technology is last century, the cassette would randomly flip sides. One minute I'd be singing along to Kodachrome and then it would flip sides and I'd be crooning to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Ahhh ... the life of a children's author!