Event Recap: Bay Book Fest

This past weekend, I was able to attend Bay Book Fest on Sunday. For it's first year, it wasn't a bad event. There are things that...

This past weekend, I was able to attend Bay Book Fest on Sunday. For it's first year, it wasn't a bad event. There are things that definitely could have been improved but I enjoyed it. So I started the day off by my parents dropping me off at the BART (The NorCal subway) around 10:30. I was able to catch an early BART and from there I BARTed to Downtown Berkeley, right into the festival. The festival was actually split in funny ways. Some streets were blocked off to traffic and some weren't.

The awesome people I met!
So, I got into Berkeley around 10:55 and I was planning to meet my cousin at the festival and we would then roam around the festival together. She was running a little late so I went ahead and went to the Teen Stage by myself. The first speaker, Kim Culbertson, was just starting her session so I stayed and listen to that. She talked about her love for teenagers and more about her books. Then, came Morgan Matson: one of the two authors I was at the festival for. She talked about Since You've Been Gone and took tons of questions from the audience. The subject of "new book" popped up a few times and here is the information I have gathered for you:
  • It comes out in May 2016 *cries*
  • The title, plot, and cover have yet to be released
  • Morgan cannot get enough of the cover of the book
  • The main character is supposed to be confident in herself (Opposite to Morgan's past main characters)
  • It takes place in Connecticut...?
  
Our delicious lunch
I'm pretty sure I missed something but you can't blame me. It was a very long day in Berkeley. Anyway, I was in line for Morgan for about half an hour and I talked to Cristina for awhile while we waited. I finally got to Morgan and she signed my books. I asked her how she was and told her I saw her during the Fierce Reads event. She said she recognized me! *fangirls* Not sure if she was just saying that or she actually did remember me but I DON'T CARE. MORGAN MATSON REMEMBERS ME!! Okay then she thanked me for asking questions and I got a picture with her! By the time I got out of her signing, Tamara was about to go up. I took a quick picture with Cristina then made my way back to the Teen Stage to see Tamara. She talked about her books and then took some questions from the audience. We then moved to the signing. She had finished copies of Every Last Word, which I got signed. I also got to talk to Genissa for a little bit and we got a picture together! Afterwards, me and my cousin went to roam around the festival. We saw Lacuna, visited some booths, and went to get some free books from the Half Price Books booth. Then after a while of exploring around, my cousin and I went to get lunch.

Now Berkeley has the best restaurants and most unique food. My cousin found a place called "Sushi Secrets" which made sushi burritos. When you first hear this, you think a sushi ingredients in tortilla wrap right? Wrong! It was actually basically a huge sushi. Inside the sushi, it wasn't exactly sushi ingredients. They had fish and all the stuff but they put cream cheese in the sushi as well, which is actually pretty good. The sushi didn't fall apart unless you took it out of the wrap. I also got a cup of milk tea with jelly in it and definitely was not bad at all. After we ate, we roamed around the festival some more for about half an hour. Then afterwards, we split ways and took the BART back home.

In this pano: Lacuna!
I can definitely say the festival has some improvements it could make but it was a great event for it's first year. As a person who was mainly looking forward to the Teen events, the teen street was dead. There were barely any booths and I didn't care about some of them, if I were to put it that way. The booths at a festival are some of the things I look forward to the most, next to the authors and food. The Teen Street could have gotten more things going on like games or a publisher booth. Another thing that could have been fixed was the way the festival was laid out. Some parts were so far from the main area (main area= where most of the people were) that you didn't want to walk all the way up the street just to get to it. I understand that some streets were needed and couldn't be blocked off to traffic but they definitely could have done a better job with how spread out the festival was.

I hope you guys enjoyed my recap! It was a great event and I can't wait to attend next year. :)

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