A Literary Year in Review

2018 was a phenomenal year. I finished my junior year of college, spent the summer in beautiful Maine, started my senior year of undergrad, visited Washington D.C., attended the National Book Festival for the second year in a row, visited Boston, and ended 2018 by rereading the Harry Potter Series in the month of December. I’ve highlighted some of my literary happenings!

In March, I got to see Hamilton on tour with my dad in Denver. This was an incredible opportunity because I took a class about Hamilton for me English capstone class. Plus, I’ve long wanted to see Hamilton!!

In April, I got to meet Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, when she came to speak at my school. I wrote a blog post about my experience that can be found here

In May, I received the English Department’s Lamb Award in Creative Writing. My work was submitted by my professors for this award, and it was exciting to be recognized and chosen for this award on the basis of both my poetry and my fiction.

In September, my mom and I flew to Washington D.C. over Labor Day weekend to attend the National Book Festival. This is the second year that I’ve attended the event, and it was a lot of fun to have my mom by my side. I saw Tracy K. Smith and Jason Reynolds speak, and got books signed by both of them. Mom was willing to wait in line to get my copy of The Poet X signed by Elizabeth Acevedo.

September 23-29 was Banned Books Week, and I helped organize events on campus to spread awareness of literary censorship. You can read my post about it here.

Also in September I got my copy of The Deepest Roots signed by Miranda Asebedo, a Kansas based author who is also an alumni of K-State English department, at her book launch. Her novel about female friendship and magic in the Kansas Heartland is one of my favorite books of 2018.

Still in September, I got to see Hank and John Green on tour for Hank’s debut novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. I’ve been a fan of the Green brothers for years, so it was amazing to see them together on stage in Kansas City.

In October, I was Matilda, from Roald Dahl’s Matilda for Halloween. Matilda has been one of my favorite literary heroines since I first read Matilda in the 3rd grade.

In November I visited Boston to go on a grad school visit. I saw many literary sights, including the Make Way for Ducklings statue and the Boston Public Library.

This fall, I took a class studying Louisa May Alcott as a major author. We read many of her works, and it was fun to be introduced to so much more than just Little Women. While I was in Boston, I took the commuter rail to Concord to go visit Orchard House, the home of Louisa May Alcott which has been turned into a museum.

This fall I worked as the assistant culture editor for the Kansas State Collegian, and I wrote many book reviews for publication over the course of the semester. In December I got to write an opinion piece about all of the books I read during the semester, and it was one of my most read articles. The photo below was featured with the story. You can also read the story and my other reviews here.

December also marked the start of my annual Harry Potter reread, in which I re-read the books and live tweet as I go. My tweets can be found @bookishlybright on Twitter. I finished all seven books by December 28.

In 2018 I read 158 books, I decided to make an infographic with some more information about my 2018 in books. You can see it below, but first I want to share some of my literary goals for 2019.

• Post more regularly on this blog
• Continue reading as much as possible
• Get some of my writing published
• Start grad school for Library and Information Science
• Attend the National Book Festival for the third year in a row

I’m sure that more goals will come up as the year progresses, but these are just a few to start out the year. Thanks for reading this blog when I decide to sporadically update, and I hope you’ll stick around for more content involving children’s and young adult literature in the coming year! You can also follow me on Goodreads to keep up with what I’m reading.