Texas Teen Book Festival brings award-winning, bestselling author Erika L. S\u00e1nchez and comedian\/YouTube sensation Akilah Hughes to 11^{th<\/sup> annual festival.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n}

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The Texas Teen Book Festival (TTBF) recently revealed the two keynote presenters for the 11^{th<\/sup> annual festival, which will take place Saturday, October 12, 2019 at Southwestern University in Georgetown.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n}

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\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to announce our 2019 keynote speakers, whose will help us open and close our one-day festival, will be writer and YouTube sensation <\/span>Akilah Hughes<\/span><\/a><\/strong> and award-winning author <\/span>Erika L. S\u00e1nchez<\/span><\/a><\/strong>,\u201d says TTBF programming director Meghan Goel. \u201cBoth Hughes and S\u00e1nchez bring wit, humor, and valuable realism to their important stories, and we cannot wait to celebrate their work at the Texas Teen Book Festival.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Akilah Hughes, <\/span>a writer, comedian, and YouTuber residing in Brooklyn, New York, will be presenting her collection of humorous essays, Obviously: Stories from my Timeline<\/em>. She\u2019s been a digital correspondent for MTV, Fusion, Comedy Central, Crooked Media, and more. A Sundance Labs Fellow, Akilah most recently appeared on the HBO series special Pod Save America<\/em>. Her comedic YouTube channel, \u201cIt\u2019s Akilah, Obviously!\u201d has amassed more than 150,000 subscribers.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Erika L. S\u00e1nchez<\/span> will be presenting her multiple-award-winning and New York Times<\/em> best-selling novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter<\/em>. S\u00e1nchez is a poet, a feminist, and a cheerleader for young women everywhere. She was the sex and love advice columnist for Cosmopolitan for Latinas<\/em> for three years, and her writing has appeared in Rolling Stone<\/em>, Salon<\/em>, and The Paris Review<\/em>. Since she was a twelve-year-old nerd in giant bifocals and embroidered vests, Erika has dreamed of writing complex, empowering stories about girls of color\u2013what she wanted to read as a young adult. She lives in Chicago, not far from the setting of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter<\/em>. Erika is fluent in Spanish, Spanglish, and cat.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The highly anticipated annual festival\u2014which draws thousands of teen and adult readers for a day of author discussions, book signings, creative workshops, special events for under-resourced students, and more\u2014features more than thirty popular and acclaimed Young Adult authors and is free and open to the public.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The 2018 Texas Teen Book Festival saw over 4,000 attendees and featured thirty-six Young Adult authors, including keynote speakers Nic Stone and Neal and Jarrod Shusterman, participating in  more than twenty panels and interactive workshops.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Texas Teen Book Festival also announced a call for submissions to their annual Fresh Ink Fiction Contest.<\/span> The contest, which is free to enter and open to all Texas writers aged eleven to eighteen, will award three winners with a $150 prize and an exclusive manuscript review. The deadline to submit is July 15, 2019.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Texas Teen Book Festival is presented in collaboration with Texas Book Festival, BookPeople, a dedicated team of librarians, and venue sponsor Southwestern University. The program is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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\nTTBF remains free and open to the public thanks to generous donors, sponsors, and volunteers. For more information, please visit <\/span>the Texas Teen Book Festival website<\/a> and keep up with announcements on <\/span>Facebook<\/u><\/strong><\/span>, <\/span>Twitter<\/a>, and <\/span>Instagram<\/strong><\/u><\/span>.<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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