Teen Book Festival

So, today I sent a super fun day with a library school pal seeing authors. This is the second year in a row I've gone to the Fairport Teen Book Festival. As with last year Terry Trueman was the keynote speaker. I also saw him speak at NYLA this year. He is funny, charismatic and entertaining. The day began with introductions of all the authors, Terry speaking and then all the authors answering a few questions. Then we moved on to the breakout sessions- to hear authors present. As you can probably guess I have been preparing for this in my infinite geekdom, so I had already chosen the people I wanted to see.
First I saw Barry Lyga, whose Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl I quite enjoyed. Lyga gave a presentation on the History of Geekery which was very funny. In it he defined the term Geek and gave the five most important characteristics of geeks (such as loves details/minutiae, knows everything and is a social misfit) and then named some famous geeks. Notable geeks covered were: Bill Gates, Leonardo DaVinci, Einstein, George Lucas, and God (fyi: google results for God are both humorous and kind of sad, besides, I don't think you need any background info on him.) who, following Lyga's checklist, is in fact a geek.
Next I moved on to David Levithan, whose Boy Meets Boy got the totally distinguished Bee seal of approval. He read from Nick and Norah, which was cool. The best part of that is the copious use of the f-bomb in the chapter he read. Mr. Levithan subsituted the bomb with the work "frock" which was endearing. Example: "Now I'm frocked." funny. Then he answered questions about the writing process of splitting a book with another author and collaborating mostly via e-mail. It totally made me love the book more. Then he read us a section of a new book that he's working on in collaboration with Rachel Cohn about a girl in love with her gay best friend. It was excellent to get a sneak peak. It was dreamy.
Next I saw Nancy Werlin, who seemed shy at first, but opened up. She talked about how the things in her life often serve as a background for her novels. She discussed the genetic research (or lack of) she had to do for Double Helix and how she sort of looked the stuff up bit by bit, which was neat. She also mentioned that when writing The Rules of Survival she had to put it away for a while due to the upsetting subject matter.
Plus, I got some free books from TokyoPop, which is good times, because I am a girl who loves free swag. Barry Lyga also gave away little canvas bags with the Fanboy and Goth Girl logo, so points to him. All in all it was a pleasing day and I'm happy I could go.