YALLWEST brings young adult book festival to Santa Monica

Throughout the day, the young adult focused book festival hosted a variety of speaker panels and book signings featuring over 60 veteran and up-and-coming YA authors, along with notable television, film, video game and comic creators. The event also promoted an array of book-related vendors, publishers, and giveaways. Longtime YALLWEST directors and authors Melissa de la Cruz and Margaret Stohl organized the event.

With a line wrapping around the block prior to the festival’s start time, the gates opened promptly at 9 a.m. Attendees rushed to line up for vendor booths, such as Epic Reads and Fierce Reads, who were giving away free books and advanced reader copies. Many people also headed towards a number of independent books stores, who were selling a curation of YA books in anticipation of the author signings taking place.

“I had my whole schedule planned for the day,” one attendee said. “I knew what authors, booths, booksellers I wanted to see, and I made sure to prioritize the events I was most excited about. YALLWEST is one of the festivals I look forward to most each year, and I always enjoy getting to see my favorite authors and meet other fans.”

The first panel of the day was the YALLWEST Opening Keynote led by authors Jason Reynolds and Stephanie Garber.

At 3 p.m., an Afternoon Spotlight panel featuring acclaimed authors Tahereh Mafi, Aiden Thomas, Ava Reid, Adam Silvera and Hafsah Faizal included a lively conversation of each author’s latest works, as well as a giveaway sponsored by Fierce Reads.

Other well-known voices in YA fiction, such as Veronica Roth (Divergent trilogy), Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen series), Soman Chainani (The School for Good and Evil series) and Alexandra Bracken (The Darkest Minds series), contributed to lively discussions about genre fiction, navigating creative careers and writing character relationships. YALLWEST’s full schedule also included topical panels like “Read the Rainbow,” which focused on LGBTQ+ literature, and “Re-Re-Retellings & Why We Love Them,” which delved into the art of re-imagining older tales.

Ahead of the festival, Chainani shared his excitement to reconnect with fellow authors and fans in the YA community after having concluded his work in the realm of fantasy. In celebrating events like YALLWEST, Chainani said he always looks forward to seeing his books picked up by new readers.

“[The YA community] has become this family, where there’s some of us who are kind of like the old guard and we’ve been around forever, and then there’s the new people,” Chainani said. “Every time I come to this festival, I come for the friends, but also just to pay tribute to the amazing people who run [YALLWEST].”

The festival also presents authors with the opportunity to announce new projects or celebrate upcoming book releases. During a panel, Faizal announced the title of her next book, “A Steeping of Blood,” while also discussing her favorite aspects of the romance fantasy genre.

“I love mixing romance and fantasy, like all those high stakes and then having the angst and pining—all of that heightened because of those high stakes,” Faizal said. “Creating these obstacles and circumstances that make life difficult for my characters and having them navigate that and create a relationship between one another, especially when it’s like enemies to lovers unearthing all of those obstacles … going through all the challenges and having overcome all of them is really fun to me.”

The final event of the day was the YALLWEST Smackdown hosted by Ryan La Sala and Angela Montoya. Authors competed for audience approval in a series of comedic skits and challenges inspired by this year’s theme revolving around concerns about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). La Sala and Montoya asked participants to “corrupt” well-known YA stories, devise tragic character backstories, hold their breath in a “let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding” challenge, engage in book-related debates and craft a collaborative story for audience actors to portray on stage. The event concluded with a standing ovation from audience members.

“It’s really great to see authors sharing their personalities on stage in such a fun and light-hearted way,” one audience member said. “There’s such a positive atmosphere in the room, where everyone’s laughing and just having fun. It’s so cool that we as a community of readers and fans get to witness some of our favorite authors just being themselves. This is why I always look forward to YALLWEST.”