So, since I’m 1) still sans internet at my new house and 2) have some big news today, I figured I’d take a break this week from my usual music update!

So, several moons ago (and by “several,” I mean “Probably at least six but I have lost all sense of time and don’t even know what month it is right now.”), my best buds Susan Dennard (SOMETHING STRANGE & DEADLY), Erin Bowman (TAKEN), and Kat Zhang (WHAT’S LEFT OF ME) and I got started talking about doing something fun this coming summer—vacation, epic road trip, or… book tour?

One of the realities about having all your friends at different publishers/imprints is that it is highlyyyy unlikely (aka never ever) that you will be officially sent on a tour together. Which just SUCKS because it is SO fun to do that stuff with your friends. Like, INCREDIBLY FUN. So, while we were debating the cool things that we could do in Summer 2013, it occurred to us that it might be the perfect time to organize our OWN tour—epic road trip style.

We brainstormed for a while about what this tour would be about--what linked us all as writers and friends. And we realized that we have two major things in common:

1) We all got our start writing as teenagers—we wrote throughout high school and college (hell, Kat got her first book deal IN college), and got published at a fairly young age.

2) We all feel strongly (and I mean SUPER strongly) about the importance of giving back—of paying it forward, whenever and however we can.

Thus, the Young Authors Give Back Tour was born.


In some ways, it’s your usual multi-city book tour: we’ll be doing signings and talking about our current and upcoming books. But we decided that it wasn’t enough for us…not by a long shot. No—we really, really, REALLY wanted to use the tour as a chance to give back. Actually, we wanted the heart of this tour to be ALL about giving back, because the four of us have been so tremendously blessed.

So, at every stop along the way, we’ll be hosting FREE writing workshops for young writers (ages 13-22). No matter what genre you write, no matter how far you are in your writing career, the workshop is open to ANYONE in that age group.

We’ll be posting workshop details (and registration forms, because space is limited) as soon as we have a set schedule, but tentative tour stops include (keyword "tentative"):

• New York, NY (5/29-6/1)


• Philadelphia, PA (6/2-6/4)


• Baltimore, MD (6/4-6/6)


• Pittsburgh, PA (6/6-6/7)


• Cleveland, OH (6/8-6/9)


• Grand Rapids, MI (6/9-6/11)


• Chicago, IL (6/12-6/14)

For more info, head on over to our official tour tumblr! We'll be updating the site as new events get locked into place, as well as while we're on tour. Photos of our epic road trip, video clips from events, random absurd musings & playlist selections (You KNOW there's going to be an Official YAGB Playlist)--all of it will be shared while we travel from New York City (starting at BEA) to Chicago.

And in honor of announcing the Young Authors Give Back Tour today, and to help us spread the word a bit (even though the tour is months away), we’re having an INTERNATIONAL giveaway of our books! There will be FOUR winners (one book each), and we’ll announce the giveaway results on April 1st!


To enter, here’s all you have to do:

• Retumble this blog!


• Tweet the following message: YA authors Erin Bowman, Susan Dennard, Sarah J. Maas, & Kat Zhang hit the road for the #YoungAuthorsGiveBackTour! http://youngauthorsgiveback.tumblr.com


• Share this on Facebook! (But please leave a comment below that links to your Facebook share!)


• Pin the tour image above! (Also, please leave a link to your Pin in the comments!)

If you live in/near any of the areas where we’re touring and can’t make it to a workshop (or you’re outside of the age bracket), we WILL be having signings at bookstores, and would LOVE to see you there!

Eeeeee!

And what the hell. This is totally our tour anthem (...except not really):