It’s been a long month! I have been to the West Coast and back three times with trips to Forks, LA, San Francisco, and Manhattan in the last four weeks which jet-setting has reminded me I’m not designed for that life-style. My plan for August is ‘write Spotlight‘ from which I hope to be sharing interesting pieces here on a regular basis; please check back here regularly and let me know what you think.
Before getting into that project, though, I have to say what a great time I had — and everyone I met there seemed to have — at the Summer School in Forks (SSIF) Twilight Symposium last month. Billed as the “only unofficial literary symposium for the Twilight Saga,” SSIF was the brain-child of Ann-Laurel Nickel and her team of serious readers at Literature Inspired Fan Events (LIFE) and, for a four day conference without a big-player sponsor and one held at a seriously remote location, I was astonished and impressed by:
- the variety and depth of the academic programming,
- the number of people who attended (not all teen girls, believe me), and
- the professional use of and quality of the venues and activities.
Yes, it was held at the real world Forks High School, a bizarre collection of 20th century educational architecture (a large building from every other decade unless I’m much mistaken) and the hotels where fans stayed were roadside motels that State Forest visitors keep in business. But the running of the program by LIFE — from room scheduling and AV functioning to meals, dances, and bus rides to the Native American reservation — was flawless.
The weird — and unfortunate — thing about this is that no one seemed to have noticed or bothered to express public appreciation for what the LIFE crew had done. Read the rest of this entry »
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