WCU Hosts Eighth Annual Young Authors Celebration
Hattiesburg, Miss., March 4, 2013 - William Carey University's School of Education hosted the eighth annual Young Authors Celebration (YAC) on Friday, March 1. First to eighth graders from area schools were invited with their teachers and parents to attend this program. Special guest speaker this year was Robert St. John, owner of the Purple Parrot Café and Crescent City Grill, and writes a weekly column and several cookbooks.
Almost 300 students from 7 schools participated in YAC. Participants included Columbia Academy, J.E. Johnson Elementary of Bassfield, New Hope Elementary of Collins, North Jones Elementary of Laurel, Oak Grove Primary of Hattiesburg, Purvis Upper Elementary, and The Dynamic Dyslexia Design School (The 3-D School) in Petal. The featured authors and illustrators were: Mr. Rick Anderson, Fleur Bradley, Kym Garraway, Dr. Ben Hornsby, Jenny Kemp, Jean Sauls, Barbara Tillery, and Diane Williams.
Educators who sign up to be a YAC teacher hold a writer's workshop in their classrooms, where their students learn about the drafting, editing, and publishing stages of writing and illustrating through hands-on experience. The students bring their books to the YAC event at WCU to share their work. All children who wish to participate are accepted.
The YAC event gives students the opportunity to meet regional authors and illustrators, tour WCU's campus, have lunch, participate in a book fair, attend workshops on writing and illustrating, meet WCU student teachers and share their books with other students.