Last weekend my friend, Judi Curtin and I were on stage at the Mountains to Sea Book Festival (I run the children’s bit of it in fact), talking about our friendship. We’ve known each other since her first book (for adults), Sorry, Walter was published in 2003.
Our First Meeting: Judi (who has a much better memory than I do), says I invited her to a writers’ dinner in town and we ate pizza and chatted about books and writing.
Since that time, both of us have written lots of books for young readers. We’ve also gone on two book tours together which I talked about in another post here:
During the talk last weekend the lovely Sarah McIntyre drew this sweet picture of us on stage together:
And took a pic of and me and Judi:
And of the audience, plus the lovely Philip Reeve, her book writing partner:
Afterwards we met lots of young readers and signed their books. We also caught up with lots of our writer friends at a big writers’ dinner: Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve (who were wearing the best costumes ever), Oisin McGann, and lots of others, and also met some new friends.
Book festivals are a wonderful way of bringing writers and book lovers together. Over the next few months Judi and I will visit West Cork, Kerry, Dublin and many other places on our Friendship Tour. We’ve both decided that it’s much more fun touring together than alone. Roll on festival season!
What’s your favourite book festival? Who have you met at a book event? I’d love to know!
Yours in books (and festivals and friendship),
Sarah XXX