An Evening with Friends and Jamie Tworkowski

June 8, 2015 was the day I had been waiting for ever since I found out that Jamie Tworkowski, founder of To Write Love on Her Arms, would be in the Chicago area for his If You Feel Too Much book tour. This stop would include a book signing, book reading, Q&A session, movie screening, and photo ops.

The event was officially called An Evening with Jamie Tworkowski. There was a framed poster with the title and Jamie's picture outside of the theater. I attended the event with my twin sister Ashley and our friend Sofie. It began about 15 minutes after 7 PM, when it was supposed to begin. When he finally entered the theater, he walked down the aisle closest to where Sofie was sitting. She was so excited; when he passed her on his way down to the stage, she giddily said "Hi!" to him.

After talking about what a weird and cool venue we were in -- there were little movie character statues all around the walls and ceiling of the theater, and we were all sitting in office chairs -- he began by reading two chapters from If You Feel Too Much, "Flowers to the Sea" and "There is Still Some Time."

Jamie Tworkowski reading part of If You Feel Too Much.

My Favorite Moments of 2014

A new year brings new memories, but there are always old memories I'll never forget, and 2014 was definitely more eventful than I could have ever hoped for. Here are some of my favorite (personal) moments of 2014.

Any time I Skyped Phoebe
Phoebe is my best friend despite the fact that we live over 2,000 miles away from each other. She's been one of my very best friends since we became friends in 2006. Since she's in California now and no longer a five-minute walk away, I value anytime we share together.
She and I mostly Skype over breaks from school with my twin sister, Ashley. Even though we haven't seen each other in over a year, when we Skype, it's like she never moved away, and that means the world to me. I've never had such a close friend for so long, so I really appreciate that we can still see
each other and talk, even if it's not in person.

When I met Shawn Johnson
February 4 was pretty much the best day ever. That was the day I met Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson. I'm a huge gymnastics fan, so when I found out that I was going to have the opportunity to meet Shawn, I was ecstatic.
Johnson was on the University of Illinois campus to commentate for a Big Ten gymnastics meet and was also a lecturer as part of the Illini Union Board's lecture series. Shawn spoke about the experiences written in her book, A Winning Balance. After the little speech Shawn gave, there was a book signing for fans to get books signed and to get a picture with her.

My sister and I getting our picture taken with Shawn. (The IUB staff said pictures had to be taken in groups of five, so three random guys we don't know had to be in our picture.) | Photo courtesy of the IUB Facebook

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.