Decatur Book Festival 2009

I had such a good time last year being part of the Decatur Book Festival as a professional writer that I decided to volunteer this year to help with programming. We're trying to get Neil Gaiman, the brilliant author of novels (American Gods), comics (Sandman), and children's books (Coraline) to come this year, and you can help by clicking on the widget below:

View all Atlanta events at Eventful

Go ahead, click it to show Neil how much we want him to come to Decatur, even if you don't live in here. It's a tremendous event.

-EB

Book Festival Wrap-Up

Well, it's taken me nearly ten days to come down from the high that comes from 1) not having anyone throw anything at you while you're speaking publicly, and 2) having people actually turn out to hear what you have to say. Thanks to Amber Dermont of Agnes Scott College and Tom Bell, programming director for the Decatur Book Festival for inviting me to participate in the annual Writer's Conference, and to my amigo Chris Kelly for pitching in his extremely valuable two cents on the art of writing for animation. Thanks also to Terra McVoy of Decatur's excellent Little Shop of Stories for inviting me to be part of the panel for teen readers - it was a total blast. I got to talk a lot about comics - my favorite medium - and it's gratifying to see that people are really beginning to accept comics as a literary form.

Book Festival Clarifications/Corrections

Two things have come to my attention this week, both erroneous, and as such, require some clarification and correction. First, the clarification:

On the Decatur Book Festival website, the description for the workshop I'm giving indicates that I was a writer on the television show Futurama. This is incorrect. To clarify: I did work on the original 72 episodes of the show, but strictly in a production capacity, as the design coordinator at Rough Draft Studios, the animation house that produced the animation for the show. This is where I cut my teeth in the animation business, and learned just about everything I know about producing a quality cartoon. And while I wish I could say that I was a Futurama writer, I can't, because I wasn't, and I don't want to pass myself off as something I'm not. For anyone contemplating signing up for the workshop because of this erroneous information, I apologize for the confusion - but I still think if you're interested in animation writing, you'll get something out of the event.

And now to the correction: On page 20 of the Decatur Book Festival circular distributed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I am described as "Cartoon Network's Elliot Blake." This is incorrect as well. I was employed by Turner Broadcasting's GameTap, which is a sister company of Cartoon Network, but I've never worked for Cartoon Network. I can only guess that since I'm giving a workshop on writing for animation, an assumption was made that I must work for Cartoon Network. I'd like to work for them, sure. But I don't. Once again, I apologize for the confusion.

Rock on.

-EB

Decatur Book Festival

The line-up for the Decatur Book Festival was announced today, and yours truly is one of the 225 “world-class authors” (their words, not mine) participating in what has become a really big deal literary event here in the southeast. The festival runs from August 29-31, and I’ll be presenting a workshop on animation writing somewhere in that timeframe. More information as it becomes available. Click here to see my profile and (ridiculous) head shot. I’m looking forward to this - it should be fun.