Trinity Prep Author Festival connects readers, writers

Ready for an author extravaganza? Bookmark Friday, Feb. 8, on your calendar.

Trinity Preparatory School in Winter Park will promote a love for reading and give readers a chance to meet their favorite young-adult authors at the fourth annual Trinity Prep Author Festival.

The free event is open to the public and will feature panel discussions with authors, books for sale from Winter Park bookstore Writer’s Block, and opportunities to come face to face with authors and get books signed.

Readers can expect appearances from 30 published writers, including Brigid Kemmerer (“A Curse So Dark and Lonely”), Ashley Woodfolk (“The Beauty That Remains”), James Ponti (“Trapped!”), Megan Shepherd (“Grim Lovelies”) and Taryn Souders (“How to (Almost) Ruin Your Summer”).

“These authors come, because young-adult and middle-grade authors are incredible, and they want to meet their readers,” said Reba Gordon, Director of the Rich Library at Trinity Prep.

Gordon was inspired to start the festival alongside English teacher Georgia Parker after a group of students were brought on a field trip back in November 2015 to YALLFest in Charleston, South Carolina — one of the biggest young-adult author festivals in the country.

The response and enthusiasm from the students was so strong that Gordon and Parker realized they had to bring the same type of experience to Winter Park.

The duo got to work creating a festival, and later that school year in April 2016, the event launched with about 14 authors appearing. The festival has grown ever since, Gordon said, with authors traveling from all across the United States and Canada to make an appearance.

Parker said meeting authors can spark an even greater interest in reading — and possibly inspire a career path.

“It’s important for not only the school but for the community, because nurturing the love for reading is so important,” Parker said. “When young people get to meet the authors, it opens a world of possibilities — not only a connection with the author and the book, but they can see that authors are just real people, and maybe that’s something that they can do.”

Gordon said she hopes students walk away from the festival with an invigorated passion for the written word, and perhaps a special connection with an author’s story.

“What we hope is that they get reignited — that they get re-inspired to want to read more, to start a writing project or to finish a writing project that they didn’t think that they could do,” Gordon said.

“When you look at our lineup of authors, we have a really diverse group and the fiction that they write is really diverse,” she said. “When you’re feeling alone, to find something or someone that you can connect to, whether it’s in a book or whatever … that’s incredible.”