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Memories from YALC, the UK’s biggest YA book convention

YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) is the UK’s first young adult book festival. You could say it’s the UK’s equivalent of BookCon and BookExpo. Every year book lovers from all over the UK gather in London at the end of July for a weekend of bookish fun. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, 2020 will be a year without YALC and as expected, it’s left a lot of us disappointed.

UKYABA’s are still going ahead this year and they have encouraged book bloggers and shortlistees to spread some YALC love through their blog posts this month. Realising that YALC isn’t taking place this year has made me reminiscent of the years past, so I thought it’d be a grand idea to create a post of my personal favourite memories.

Incoming soppy-ness! This year I was nominated for UKYABA’s most Inspirational award and I’d like to say a massive THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to click on my name and press that ‘vote’ button. I’ve been on the book community for 6 years now and it’s the best thing I’ve truly ever been a part of, and for my blog and bookstagram to be acknowledged like this has meant the absolute world to me.

Now, let’s reminisce about YALC together, shall we?

Reuniting with friends

This is by far my favourite part about YALC! Being in the online book community, you will have a lot of friends that you only get to see once a year at YALC. The excitement of knowing you’ll be seeing your friends for three days straight in and out of the convention is just a feeling that I don’t get tired of.

And it’s guaranteed that you’ll probably leave YALC with even more friends, because you’re constantly meeting new people with one massive shared interest; books!

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YALC 2019 Review

YALC 2019 has come and gone, and it passed way too quickly for my liking. But you know what they say? Time flies when you’re having fun!

I’ve attended YALC for the past four years, but this is the first time I went as an exhibitor at the Fairyloot booth. And, even though I was working the booth I still had plenty of time to attend signings, check out others booths and the rest of the YALC floor.

Last year I reviewed YALC 2018 and brought up a few issues that I’d like to see changed. You can check out that review here! I’m really happy to say though that a lot of the issues I listed seemed to have been resolved this year, but there were a few that could still be improved upon.

There’s lots to cover, so let’s get on with this shall we?

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What To Expect At YALC

If it’s your first time attending YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) you might be feeling a tad overwhelmed. I won’t lie, there’s a lot of information floating around Instagram and Twitter about the event and it can get quite confusing, especially if you see conflicting information. But don’t fret! I’m here to help.

I have aimed this post specifically towards first time attendees so you have an idea of what to expect when YALC begins, whether you’re just attending for a day or the whole weekend.

Included in this post I also have some exciting information regarding Bloomsbury YA’s booth and what giveaways they’ll be hosting throughout the weekend this year.

Let’s begin, because there’s a lot to cover!

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YALC Tips & Tricks

YALC tips and tricks, and Guides to YALC are some of the best posts you can read to prepare for the UK’s biggest book festival. This is because you’re getting helpful advice from people who have experience from attending the event before. Which I have! I’ve been attending YALC since 2016 and every year has been an absolute joy.

I won’t lie guys, YALC is a lot, it’s busy, it’s exciting, it’s exhausting. But, most of all it’s ridiculously fun. I can guarantee it’ll probably be one of the best weekends of your year.

As I said before, I’ve been attending YALC since 2016, so I definitely have my fair share of experience with the event (check out my Guide to YALC here) and over the years I’ve found some tricks (or hacks, if you will) that will help you get a bit more prepared for the weekend. Some of these tips you may not have come across before and others are small, but as Tesco says, every little helps!

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What I’d Like To See At YALC 2019

YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) is the UK’s first young adult book festival. You could say it’s the UK’s equivalent of BookCon and BookExpo which take place in a big city within the US each year. This convention started back in July 2014 with author Malorie Blackman being heavily involved in its creation. Over the years, YALC has managed to bring along best-selling authors such as Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Maggie Stiefvater, VE Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Marcus Sedgwick, Patrick Ness and many more, making it one of the most exciting events of the year for book bloggers around the UK. I’ve been travelling down to London for YALC from Scotland every Summer since 2016, so you could say I’ve got a few years of experience attending the event.

YALC is an absolutely wonderful event and you’re always guaranteed to leave with an abundance of new books and friends. However, there are some things that I’d personally like to see in future events that I feel could definitely improve the experience for attendees, and potentially the vendors too.

We finally got the author line up for YALC 2019 this past week (it’s awesome!) so it definitely felt like the perfect time to post this! You can view the schedule here. We really appreciate all the hard work and effort people go into to make this event happen each year, I’m genuinely counting down the days till YALC 2019.

Let’s begin!

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YALC 2018 Review

It’s officially been one week since YALC, it’s crazy that the UK’s biggest young adult book convention has already been and gone. This time last week, I was in London with friends, filled with excitement about the event. And now, I’m already anticipating next year.

If you were following the YALC updates in the months leading up to YALC, then you know that a few things changed this year that quite a lot of attendees where unsure about. We weren’t sure if these changes would be good or bad when compared to previous years. If you read my previous post, My Guide to YALC, then you know that this was my third year attending. So, I thought I’d do a review of YALC 2018 and let you guys know what I personally thought of the changes and how I found this year compared to the previous two years that I’ve attended.

As always, please be aware that these opinions are my own and this is what I personally thought of YALC this year.

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My Guide to YALC

YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) is the UK’s first young adult book festival. You could say it’s the UK’s equivalent of BookCon and BookExpo which take place in a big city within the US each year. This convention started back in July 2014 with author Malorie Blackman being heavily involved in it’s creation. Over the years, YALC has managed to bring along best-selling authors such as Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Maggie Stiefvater, VE Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Marcus Sedgwick, Patrick Ness and many more, making it one of the most exciting events for book bloggers around the UK. I’ve been travelling down to London for YALC from Scotland every Summer since 2016, this will be my third year attending and so I thought I’d share some tips and tricks for you guys to help make your YALC experience more enjoyable.

When I went to YALC the first time, I had no idea what was going on. You’d look one way and people would be running towards a booth. You’d look the other way and people would be searching the hall for a hidden object. The first time was absolute madness for me, but I managed to make some new friends as well as hang out with friends I’d met through the book community too. I hope these tips and tricks will be useful for you, I have learned these from experience, but also remember that everyone handles events like this differently, so make sure you know what you want out of this experience, whether it’s to meet your favourite authors, get your books signed, make new friends, talk to publishers, take part in the workshops, etc. Know what you want out of this experience, then plan and organise around it.

(I may use photos that are not mine for this post to give you guys a feel of YALC, I don’t really have many photos inside of YALC, unfortunately! I will credit and link the owner below each photo, unless it really is mine.)

Anyway, let’s get to these tips…

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