Feb 28

Feb 28 Episode #187: CHOP SUEY: ALA Awards, AI, and HarperCollins Strike update

Welcome back! Grace and Alvina talk about AI art and text, the HarperCollins strike, and the ALA Youth Media Awards!

Checking In:

Alvina is happy about Little Brown’s success at the ALA Awards this year. They won 9 awards including the Newbery medal for Freewater written by Amina Luqman-Dawson. Alvina is headed to Kindling words and is looking forward to catching up with old friends and making new ones there. She is missing regular snowfall in the city this year.

Grace has been busy with virtual school visits and has resumed travel again on her book tour with Kate Messner! Listen to an interview on NPR about their new book, Once Upon a Book.

Chop Suey Topics:

Harper Collins Strike update: Day #60. They announced that they had reached an agreement and mediation will begin on February 1st about raising salaries.
The Book Friends talk about the world of ChatGPT, AI art, and cultural appropriation. Has the humanity of art lost within all of this new technology? Will publishing be affected by digital art and picture books? How about focusing on fixing global warming or things that matter more than efficient creativity?
Alison Morris talks about the ALA Awards were announced.

Gratefuls:

Grace is grateful for all the book award winners including her friend, Lisa Yee, who won a Newbery Honor Award and The Children’s Literature Award for Maizy Chen's Last Chance, and is grateful for the kindness of a stranger she met at a book festival years ago.

Alvina is grateful for all who work so hard in publishing to get the award-winning books out on time. The ALA is really like the Oscars of book publishing!

Alison is grateful for all of the parents out there raising great kids. She doesn’t get alot of kid times these days, but is glad she can with some wonderful friends who have young kids right now.

Thank you for tuning in! Thank you to Hachette Audio, Little Brown Books for Young Readers, and Alex at Pacyworks Studio for producing and editing this podcast. Be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and tell a friend about us. (Use the hashtag #bookfriendsforever.)

You can find Alvina @Planetalvina on Twitter and TikTok and @Alvinaling on Instagram

You can find Grace @Pacylin on Instagram and @gracelinauthor on TikTok and Hive
Alison Morris is @AlisonLMorris on Twitter and @kidlitgirl on Instagram Please rate and review us on apple podcasts!

If you’re a patron, don’t forget to check out this week’s Random Questions feed! Authors Mayonn Paasewe-Valchev and Grace Lin answer the random question “If you were to open a store, what are the things you would sell and what would be its name?” Click here to listen! If you’re not a patron already, join today!

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