YALLWEST brings literary excitement to Samo
YALLWEST, the biggest young adult book festival in the United States, took place at Samo on April 29, 2023. The event featured many popular authors of young adult novels that shared information about their current books and upcoming ones, had guided discussions and met the readers of their novels. Every year, the festival uses the help of student volunteers named “teen ambassadors” as well as educators to make it happen.
With YALLWEST being such a popular event, many Samo clubs took advantage of this and set up booths to fundraise and raise awareness for a cause. Samo’s Immersion Club, a club that highlights the Immersion program and fundraises for the Immersion students of Samo, held a booth for the entire event. Club President Teddie Waxler (’23) details how this proved to be a great event for Immersion students and bookworms alike.
“It was awesome to see the amount of book lovers coming together for an entire day,” Waxler said. “From an economic standpoint, our Samohi Immersion booth was incredibly successful, selling snacks and cold drinks all day.”
Books For Kids, a literary club at Samo that fundraises and distributes books for schools with low literacy rates around the Southern California area, also had a booth at YALLWEST. Club President Maeko Gross (’25) asked attendees for new and used books and monetary donations, collecting a total of nine boxes of books and over 300 dollars.
“We decided to volunteer at YALLWEST because it was an opportunity to promote our club and gain donations from others who care about providing kids equal access to reading material,” Gross said.
The event was packed full of attendees, with long lines outside of book booths, some of which featured giveaways. A few booths had wheels that guests could spin and win books, bookmarks and in some cases, food. They also had food trucks on the outside Basketball Courts, including In n Out, Poutine and Ice Cream. Many attendees showed up in hopes of getting to meet their favorite authors, some of whom signed books and had one-on-one conversations with the YALLWEST guests. In addition to booths and book signings, YALLWEST also held panel discussions with popular authors in Barnum Hall, the North Gym, the Cafeteria and the Discovery Atrium. This year, Marie Lu and Casey McQuinston hosted the Opening Keynote, Angie Thomas and Morgan Matson hosted the Middle Grade Keynote and Dhonielle Clayton and Ryan La Sala moderated the infamous author “Smackdown.” Other genre-specific presentations and activities were held throughout the day.