The programme for ‘Turning Point’ has now been agreed. The morning consists of two panels followed by audience questions and discussion. The afternoon will have three short speeches with discussion, concluding with Melvin’s keynote speech and, if there’s time, some more questions and discussion. I hope that it will be an invigorating day of discussion and debate. There are still some places left for the conference. Details of how to book are below, with more information about the conference in earlier and archived posts. If you’ve registered but not paid, your reservation will not be held after this weekend. Registration will end on November 22nd or earlier if the conference sells out. Programme for the day 10-10.30AM Registration 10.35 Introduction and housekeeping 10.45 – 11.55…

The internet was down all day yesterday, with ntl reporting a ‘major system failure’. This turned out to be helpful. For once, I managed to get some writing done before driving to the university at midday. Recently, I seem to spend every spare minute dealing with the Turning Point conference (see below, full programme to be announced shortly). I did some more writing in the evening, then joined Sue at our local, where we’d arranged to meet two friends at half ten. An hour later, we were back at the house, watching the US election. BBC1, CNN and Sky News had the best coverage, but we mostly stuck with BBC1. Then there was a power cut. I went outside and the whole neighbourhood was dark.…

The line-up for Turning Point is now complete and I’m about to do the press release. In addition to the authors named in earlier posts (just scroll down), Graham Marks, author of the excellent How It Works will be chairing a session and Carnegie Prize winner Beverley Naidoo, (whose novel The Other Side Of Truth I’ve been teaching this week, while I’ve been reading its fine sequel, Web Of Lies) will appear on a panel about novels that deal with social issues. Publicist Justin Somper will be speaking about how to promote Young Adult fiction and Alison Waller will give the academic perspective. Sorting out the line-up hasn’t been easy, as I wanted to get a wide variety of writers of different generations. I also…

If you’ve come here for more information about Turning Point, the November conference on Young Adult Fiction, scroll down to see the main two entries. There’s been no official publicity yet, just emails, but we’ve had a steady stream of bookings. This month, the conference was awarded an ‘Arts For Everyone’ grant, which is great news. For a start, it means that we’ll be able to pay the writers properly. I’ve been holding off contacting more novelists about appearing until I knew the result of the grant application. Now I’m holding off because everybody in publishing seems to be on holiday until next week (and our administrator’s on holiday until the week after), but I’m open to offers…Stop Press: Kevin Brooks, author of the excellent…

Young Adult Fiction is one of the most important areas of publishing, for reasons discussed below , Yet the UK has no conferences specifically devoted to it. There’s a lack of critical discussion and even awareness of what YAF is. In particular, many readers fail to recognise that there is a large subsection of YA fiction that is aimed at readers chronologically aged 13 or 14+ rather than at 11+s with a reading of 14 are more. YAF writers are often a small add-on to children’s book conferences rather than an integral part of them. Although YAF is emerging as an important area of academic study, there are no academic conferences devoted to it there either. That’s why, earlier this year, when I got a…