Ohioana at Last!

April 14, 2018     laurathebibliophile     Event

Hey, all!

Erin and I have been trying to go to the Ohioana Book Festival for the last few years, and this year we finally made it!

We drove through rain on our way to Columbus, but luckily it was clear skies for the start of the festival. We arrived a little late due to the aforementioned rain and the resulting traffic, but our first panel didn’t start until noon, so it wasn’t an issue.

We hadn’t been to Ohioana before, so we didn’t know at all what we were doing, and we just wandered the information tables for a while until we found the Pickerington Public Library station.

As you may know, we went to the Pickerington Public Library YA Fest a few years ago and loved it, so we stopped to chat. We got the date for this year’s PPLYAFest and we each got an arc (look out for the reviews soon).

There is also a new Children’s bookstore in the Columbus area called Cover to Cover, which is exciting.

We only ended up going to one panel— YA in the Spotlight with Mindy McGinnis, Kristina McBride, Cinda Williams Chima, and Josephine Rascoe Keenan. The panel was all about their YA novels, and the authors ended up tackling topics like the minutiae of querying and writing diversity appropriately. They also talked about a lot of great resources for pre-published authors, which was super helpful.

We spent the rest of our time at Ohioana in the ballroom, which is where the authors’ tables were set up. It was inspiring to see so many authors, all from our home state! A lot of the authors, understandably, knew each other, and it was fun to see the camaraderie between them. We could talk to a few different authors all at once, because they were friends and all in the same section.

We also found a fair number of Ohio authors that we weren’t familiar with, which was very cool. We definitely have added several books to our TBRs, so there should be no shortage of reviews anytime soon.

Coming to Ohioana for the first time, we had no idea how amazing it would be, and we were still geeking out over the event late into the evening.

Ohioana genuinely has something for everyone, and we will definitely be back next year!

From our bookshelves to yours,

Laura and Erin

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