What Life Threw at Me: Meeting Julie Cross

On October 18, I got to meet one of my favorite authors, Julie Cross, at the Youth Literature Fest.

I found out about the opportunity to meet her on the 13th when I saw Cross tweet about it. I was excited about it, because I really enjoy the books I've read of hers.

It was kind of a short notice, but I didn't have anything other than homework and laundry planned for the weekend anyway, so meeting her would surely be the highlight of my weekend.

The Youth Literature Festival was held at the IHotel and Conference Center in Champaign. Luckily for me, I go to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, so it would be easy to get there. The festival is actually ran by U of I's College of Education, which is probably why it was pretty close to campus.

Although it was ran by the university, it was a youth literature festival, so a lot of the attendees were parents and their kids. I was one of the only college students there who wasn't working, which Julie and I briefly discussed.

There were lots of mini events going on at the festival, like an author panel and a few talks/lectures, but the only thing I wanted to go to was the book signing. Also, since the festival was intended for kids, I didn't recognize many of the authors there.



I know of Cross and her work because of her Letters to Nowhere series, where the main character is an elite gymnast. If you know me or have read my blog before, you probably know that I'm a gymnastics fanatic, so I'd love novels about gymnastics.

If you are a gymnastics fan, I recommend the LTN series. While reading them, I didn't want to put any of the books down, so you might feel the same way.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a physical copy of any of the Letters to Nowhere books with me on campus. I left my only physical copy at home. (I have most of the series electronically for my Kindle app.)

Fortunately, Cross recently released her newest book, Whatever Life Throws at You. It wasn't about gymnastics, but it was still a young adult book. Its main characters are a baseball player and a runner. I don't care too much for baseball or track, but I do like sports, and I do like Cross's writing, so I decided I would read it anyway.

So on Saturday, I rushed to get to the IHotel before noon so I wouldn't miss Cross at the book signing. I had to walk about a mile in twenty minutes to get there, so I was speed walking my way there.

I got there in time, waited in line for a few minutes to buy WLTAY and got it signed by Cross before she left. When I finished paying for my book, I didn't see her at the table anymore, so I worried that I missed her, but she was still there. She was just standing away from the table with another fan. She then returned to her table to sign the other fan's book, and I lined up behind him.

Her table displayed four of her books, Tempest, Timestorm, Vortex, and Whatever Life Throws at You. She even had little trading cards and stickers for WLTAY, which I love. I've never seen anything like that for any books I've read, so I thought it was cool.

One of the employees working at the register put a blue paper in my book, so when I gave it to Julie to sign, she thought the blue paper was my bookmark and that I was already hundreds of pages in. I laughed and explained it to her.

We then briefly talked about how we'd interacted on Twitter before and how there weren't a lot of college students there to actually enjoy the fest, since a lot of her characters are teenagers. I then told her how I knew that, since I read the LTN series. She then thanked me for reading those, and we said our goodbyes.

It was a pretty short conversation, but it was nice. I'd never met an actual author or novelist before, (I've met Shawn Johnson before, but she's more of a gymnast than an author) so I enjoyed talking to a fellow writer (I'm a journalism major, so I consider myself a writer). When thinking of my time at U of I, I never expected to meet a novelist I actually knew of and whose books I read, so this opportunity was a nice surprise.

I hope to meet Cross again and to have a longer conversation with her sometime in the future. It was a pleasure to meet her. I'm glad life threw this opportunity at me.