News

General

Ch1Con 2021 Registration is Open Now!

Hello friends! It’s that time of year again. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to figure out the best and safest ways to put on our conference this year, and we’re so grateful for your patience and enthusiasm as we waited to see what 2021 had in store.

We are pleased to announce that Chapter One Conference will be held this July 31st as a hybrid event with both online-only and in-person options for attendance!

We are aware of the ongoing risks that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to those who are not yet or cannot be vaccinated for a number of reasons. We also learned throughout our experience last year how to best expand the conference to be accessible to those who can’t leave home or travel to Chicago, and moving forward we’re committed to making a virtual attendance option available for all our future events. All this being said, we are still very eager to create safe, in-person opportunities for young writers to meet, network, and collaborate. 

Ch1Con was created as a way to bring a vibrant online community of young writers out into the IRL space for a weekend of togetherness, eye-contact, and awkward geekery. Ch1Con itself has in the past been a chance for our team, which is scattered all across the country, to hug each other after a whole year of long-distance friendship. For this reason, we’re doing our best to bring an in-person component back to the event for those who are vaccinated or willing to mask and social-distance. 

Here are some details about how this will work. 

The in-person component of the conference will be held at our regular venue, the Hilton Garden Inn of Chicago/O’Hare. In addition to following hotel guidelines, attendees will be asked to show proof of vaccination before entering our event space without a mask. Masks will be required for all attendees who are not fully vaccinated for whatever reason. If you register for in-person Ch1Con 2021 attendance but cannot attend in person for whatever reason, you will have the option to transition your admission to online by contacting us here.

As for online attendees, we will also be opening a discord forum that will allow attendees to chat, share their work, and collaborate on writing exercises. Our speakers will take questions and encourage participation from those online and off, and we will all do our best to make you feel as if everyone’s physically together. We are looking to have a combination of both online and in-person speakers (veteran Ch1Events attendees have lots of experience with remote speakers at our in-person events) but we are allowing speakers the same flexibility to shift to remote attendance as needed.

Speaking of speakers…we are SO excited to announce that our Keynote speaker for 2021 is none other than young author and future feature filmmaker, Camryn Garrett!

Camryn has been a friend of the conference for some time now and we are so excited to finally be able to have her join us for a keynote address, as well as our Ask Us Anything panel. For those of you who might not know, Camryn Garrett is a longstanding member of the young writers community on social media, and is the author of two novels published by Random House Children’s. Full Disclosure, which was released in 2019, and Off the Record, which was released in 2021, are both incredible stories and we encourage you to check them out if you haven’t already. 

We are so thrilled to be able to share this news and open registration for you all today! 

Attendance is available to any young writers who will be between the ages of 11 and 20 as of July 25th, 2020. (If you’ll be between the ages of 21 and 29, check out the Chapter Twenty-One Conference!)

Register now at our New Attendee Online rate of $50* (lunch not included)! 

Ch1Con ONLINE Youth Registration Link

Ch1Con ONLINE 18-20 Registration Link

Ch21Con ONLINE Registration Link

You can also register at our New Attendee In- Person Rate of $70*

Ch1Con IN-PERSON Youth Registration Link

Ch1Con IN-PERSON18-20 Registration Link

Ch21Con IN-PERSON Registration Link

*if you are a past attendee of Ch1Con you are eligible for a discounted rate. You should have received an email to this effect, but if you did not please contact us here.

Finally, to address some of our common FAQs…

Interested in who this year’s other speakers will be? Keep an eye on the blog, because we’ll be announcing the speakers very soon! (And, as usual, registered attendees will get a sneak peek via e-mail!)

Curious what’s going on with Ch1Camp this year? Once again, updates on that are soon to come. We have some very exciting plans for free online events in the works. 

As usual, spots are limited to attend the conference, so make sure to register before they’re gone!

If you can’t make it to the conference but still want to support us, we have a Patreon now!

We’re so excited for the 2021 conference (and hope you are too)! See you (virtually or in person) in July!

— The Ch1Events Team

General

Ch1Con 2020 Keynote Announcement: Ravynn K. Stringfield!

Hey all! We are so excited to finally announce our keynote speaker for 2020, Ravynn K. Stringfield! She’s a super awesome author who’ll be presenting the keynote address “To Write Yourself Free: Meditations on Failing, Flying and Futures”.

Speaker Announcement Image (2)

Ravynn K. Stringfield is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and Africana Studies graduate affiliate at William & Mary. Her dissertation project focuses on Black women and girls as creators and protagonists of new media narratives that are futuristic, fantastic, and/or digital in nature. Her writing practice also includes blogging, crafting essays and drafting novels and short stories. You can find her written work across the Internet, though most notably on her weekly blog, Black Girl Does Grad Schooland her freelance work has appeared in ZORA, Shondaland, Greatist, Catapult and more. Her fiction is represented by Leah Pierre of Ladderbird Agency. When she’s not writing, she can be found posted up in local coffee shops, trying out new beginner asanas in a yoga studio or telling her dog, Genghis, all about her Lois Lane obsession.

If you’re excited to hear Ravynn speak, or to hear any of our other speakers, or just hang out with fellow young writers at our 100% online conference, there’s still tons of time to register! Click the “Register” link above to secure your place at our conference this Saturday!

2020 Conference, General

Ch1Con 2020 Speaker Announcement: Christina Li

We are pleased to announce our first speaker for Ch1Con 2020, Christina Li!

Christina is a student at Stanford University studying Economics. In her spare time, when she is not stressing over her latest stats problem set, she is dreaming up characters and stories for children and young adults. Her debut, Clues to the Universe, is coming out from Quill Tree Press in early 2021.

You can find her on twitter or visit her website.

Interested in hearing Christina speak at Ch1Con? Register for the online event today.

General

Hello Again: Ch1Con 2020 Registration Now Open

We hope you’re doing well and staying safe during this incredible time. Many of you have been asking us what our plans are for Ch(2)1Con, Ch1Camp and our other yearly, summertime events. This time last year, we were filling your timelines and in-boxes with news about upcoming festivities, but this year we’ve been uncharacteristically quiet. This quiet has been in response to both the global pandemic and the recent, important conversations surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. However, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to figure out the best and safest ways to proceed given the current circumstances, and we’re so grateful for your patience.

Now, we think it’s a good time to let you all know what we have in mind for Ch1Con 2020. 

We are pleased to announce that Chapter One Conference will be held this July 25th as a 100% online event.

We are obviously sad that we cannot have our conference this year in person. Ch1Con was created as a way to bring a vibrant online community of young writers out into the real world for a weekend of togetherness, eye-contact, and awkward geekery. It has been absolutely devastating for us to cancel this IRL event for the first time since 2012. The Ch1Con team is scattered all across the country, and we miss each other just as much as we miss all of you. However, more than anything, we want to keep our community healthy and safe. And, no matter what, the show will go on…perhaps with a few more technical difficulties than usual. 

At this digital Ch1Con, speakers will give presentations via video conferencing (details on platform coming soon). Giveaway items will be mailed to your listed address, along with a care package of swag and other writerly goodies. 

We will also be opening a forum that will allow attendees to chat, share their work, and collaborate on writing exercises. Our speakers will take questions and encourage participation from those online, and we will all do our best to make you feel as if we’re physically together. 

Attendance is open to any young writers who will be between the ages of 11 and 20 as of July 25th, 2020. (If you’ll be between the ages of 21 and 29, check out the Chapter Twenty-One Conference!)

Register now at our New Attendee rate of $50* (lunch not included)! 

Ch1Con Youth Registration Link

Ch1Con 18-20 Registration Link

Ch21Con Registration Link

*if you are a past attendee of Ch1Con you are eligable for a discounted rate. You should have recieved an e-mail to this effect, but if you did not please contact us here.

Now, for the more typical, ~precedented~ FAQs…

Interested in who this year’s speakers are? Keep an eye on the blog, because we’ll be announcing the speakers very soon! (And, as usual, registered attendees will get a sneak peek via e-mail!)

Curious what’s going on with Ch1Camp this year? Once again, updates on that are soon to come. We have some very exciting plans for free online events in the works. 

As usual, spots are limited to attend the conference, so make sure to register before they’re gone!

If you can’t make it to the conference but still want to support us, we have a patreon now!

We’re so excited for the 2020 conference (and hope you are too)! See you (virtually) in July!

— The Ch1Events Team

2018-2019 Events, 2019 Conference, Ch21Con

2019 Ask Anything Panel

Hey there, everyone!

Can’t make it to one of our 2019 conferences? Not to worry! As in previous years, we’re excited to be able to live-stream the “Ask Anything” panel with our 2019 speakers, so all of you amazing young writers who can’t make it to Ch1Con and Ch21Con 2019 still get to participate in something.

This year, the participating speakers will be:

  • Francesca Zappia (Eliza and Her Monsters)
  • Joan He (Descendant of the Crane)
  • Katy Rose Pool (There Will Come a Darkness – September, 2019!)
  • Riley Redgate (Final Draft)

The panel moderators will be Emma Rose Ryan (Ch1Con director) and Julia Byers (Ch21Con director).

The Ask Anything panel will take place during the conferences on Saturday, June 29th from 4:00 to 5:00 PM CDT (5:00 to 6:00 PM EDT).

This is totally free and you don’t need to sign up for anything; it’s simply our gift to you to thank you for all of your support throughout the year. You can find the live-stream on our organization’s YouTube channel at:

www.youtube.com/chapteroneconference

Or, we’re conveniently embedding the video in the post below:

We’ll be asking the panelists a mixture of questions from both the attendees at the two conferences and those of you watching from home. The questions can be about absolutely anything you want, serious or goofy, writing-related or not. (For example, in 2014 we asked our speakers about their OTPs. One replied that she shipped herself and Panera.)

If you’ll be watching the live-stream and would like to ask the speakers a question, there are two ways you can go about doing it:

1.) If you already know what you’d like to ask, you can email your question(s) to us at chapter21conference@gmail.com any time until the day of the conference.

2.) If you come up with a question while you’re watching the live-stream, you can tweet it using #Ch1Con or #Ch21Con.

Either way, feel free to ask as many questions as you’d like. No promises we’ll make it through every single question during the hour-long panel, but we’ll do our best.

Thanks again for supporting us, guys! It means the world to everyone on the Chapter One Events team.

See you at 4:00 PM central/5:00 PM eastern!

– The Chapter One Events team

2019 Conference, Ch21Con

2019 Workshop Leader: Katy Rose Pool!

The Chapter One Events team is absolutely thrilled to announce our final workshop leader for the 2019 Chapter One Young Writers Conference and Chapter Twenty-One Conference:
YA fantasy author Katy Rose Pool!

Katy Rose Pool

Katy Rose Pool is a writer living in Berkeley, California. She grew up in Los Angeles, where her screenwriter father taught her about three act structure, characterization, and inciting incidents all before she could tie her shoes. Katy studied history and English at UC Berkeley. She enjoys breakfast sandwiches, fancy cocktails, rooting for the Golden State Warriors, and books that set her on fire.

Katy is represented by Alexandra Machinist and Hillary Jacobson at ICM Partners.

Her debut novel There Will Come a Darkness will be out September 3, 2019 from Holt Books for Young Readers/Macmillan.

Katy will be leading workshops at both Ch1Con and Ch21Con, discussing how to write a book that is “unputdownable.” She will also be speaking on the conferences’ combined ask anything panel.

Plus, in honor of speaking, Katy has generously offered to give away an advanced reader’s copy of her hotly anticipated debut novel There Will Come a Darkness (which sold to Macmillan in a million-dollar deal)! Just click the link below to enter the raffle. We’ll leave it open for one week!

Click here by 6/20 to win an ARC of There Will Come a Darkness!

Find Katy online:

Find There Will Come a Darkness on GoodReads here.

Interested in attending one of our young writers’ conferences on June 29 in Des Plaines, IL (a suburb of Chicago)? You can learn more at:

Thank you for joining us for all of our speaker announcements the past couple months! We’re so, so excited about all of the amazing authors and young publishing professionals joining us for the conferences this year. See you on June 29!!

– The Ch1Events Team

2019 Conference, Ch21Con

2019 Panel Moderators: Emma Rose Ryan & Julia Byers!

The Chapter One Events team is happy to announce our next two speakers for the 2019 Chapter One Young Writers Conference and Chapter Twenty-One Conference: Ch1Con director Emma Rose Ryan & Ch21Con director Julia Byers!

Emma Rose RyanEmma Rose Ryan is an undergraduate studying Creative Writing at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She’s been a member of the Chapter One Young Writers Conference team since the event’s inception, and she was honored to take on the role of Director in 2017. Emma writes middle-grade and YA fiction, focusing on paranormal and urban fantasy genres. When she’s not writing, Emma can be found reciting Shakespeare, watching The West Wing, or petting someone else’s cat.

Emma will be co-moderating the conferences’ combined ask anything panel.

Find Emma online:

6O4A1500-2Julia Byers is the president of nonprofit Chapter One Events, founder of the Chapter One Young Writers Conference, and founder and director of the Chapter Twenty-One Conference. She spends her days as an assistant for a children’s literary agency, her early mornings doing nonprofit work, her evenings writing, and her weekends as a freelance photographer (sometimes not in that order). She is a graduate of the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, where she received Highest Honors in Honors Creative Writing & Literature and minored in Global Media Studies (Film), as well as the Columbia Publishing Course UK, an intensive publishing certificate program organized in collaboration between Columbia University and Exeter College, Oxford University. Her writing has received a variety of honors, including First Place in the Children’s/Young Adult Fiction category of the 82nd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, a Hopwood Award, and the Arthur Miller Award. In her free time, Julia enjoys watching too many movies, doing outdoorsy things like jogging and hiking, and pretending she has free time. She lives in New York City.

Julia will be co-moderating the conferences’ combined ask anything panel, as well as moderating Ch21Con’s young publishing panel.

Find Julia online:

Interested in attending one of our young writers’ conferences on June 29 in Des Plaines, IL (a suburb of Chicago)? You can learn more at:

We’ve got one more amazing speaker to announce as well in the lead-up to the 2019 conferences, so keep an eye on our websites and social media for our last speaker announcement coming your way soon!!

– The Ch1Events Team

2019 Conference, Ch21Con

2019 Keynote Speaker: Francesca Zappia!

The Chapter One Events team is over-the-moon to announce our keynote speaker for the 2019 Chapter One Young Writers Conference and Chapter Twenty-One Conference: YA author Francesca Zappia!

Chessie ZappiaFrancesca Zappia lives in Indiana and graduated from the University of Indianapolis with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, cooking, or playing video games. She was chosen as the 2017 Emerging Author at the Indiana Authors Awards, and her second novel, Eliza and Her Monsters, was chosen as a Kirkus Best Teen Book of 2017, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and was among the Top 10 of the YALSA 2018 Best Fiction for Young Adults list.

You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @ChessieZappia, and on her website, www.francescazappia.com.

Chessie will be giving the keynote addresses at both Ch1Con and Ch21Con, discussing how to keep sight of our reasons for creating stories, and how to harness those reasons. She will also be speaking on the conferences’ combined ask anything panel and signing books at the end of the day.

(If you’re a Ch1Con alumnus, you might remember Chessie leading workshops and speaking on the ask anything panel at our 2016 conference!)

Plus, in honor of speaking, Chessie has generously offered to give away a signed paperback copy of her amazing sophomore book, Eliza and Her Monsters! Just click the link below to enter the raffle. We’ll leave it open for one week!

Click here by 5/31 to win a signed paperback copy of Francesca Zappia’s Eliza and Her Monsters!

Find Chessie online:

Find Chessie’s books on GoodReads:

Interested in attending one of our young writers’ conferences on June 29 in Des Plaines, IL (a suburb of Chicago)? You can learn more at:

We’ve got another amazing speaker or two to announce as well in the lead-up to the 2019 conferences, so keep an eye on our websites and social media for more speaker announcements coming your way soon!!

– The Ch1Events Team

2019 Conference, Ch21Con

2019 Ch1Con & Ch21Con Blog Tour Schedule!

Hey, everybody! We’re thrilled to announce the 2019 Ch1Con & Ch21Con Blog Tour!

We put together this annual blog tour to share info and fun, behind-the-scenes facts about the Chapter One Young Writers Conference and Chapter Twenty-One Conference (and to give away some awesome prizes, of course). The 2019 blog tour will kick off on Friday, May 10 and conclude towards the end of May. Follow the tour for guest posts, interviews by the Chapter One Events team–and, of course, giveaways!

Ch1Events Blog Tour 2019 Banner

Check out the schedule below:
  • Friday, May 10: www.ch21con.tumblr.com
    • The new Ch21Con Tumblr hosts a interview with conference director Julia Byers!
    • GIVEAWAY: SIGNED hardcover copy of On the Come Up by Angie Thomas!
  • Tuesday, May 14: www.batmansymbol.tumblr.com
    • 2019 workshop leader and panelist Riley Redgate shares a personal post about speaking at the conferences!
  • Friday, May 17: www.anniesullivanauthor.com
    • Author Annie Sullivan hosts an interview of Ch21Con team member Ariel Kalati!
    • GIVEAWAY: $25 Barnes & Noble e-gift card!
  • Wednesday, May 22: www.juliathewritergirl.com
    • Ch21Con director Julia Byers hosts an interview of Ch21Con team member Katie Nichols!
    • GIVEAWAY: SIGNED hardcover copy of The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman!
  • Saturday, May 25: www.kirabrighton.weebly.com
    • Freelance editor Kira Brighton hosts a guest post by Ch21Con team member Katie Nichols, on rekindling your passion for writing!
  • BONUS: Beginning of June: Joan He’s newsletter Looseleaf
    • 2019 workshop leader and panelist Joan He will sharing about speaking at the conferences in her June newsletter! Make sure to subscribe now in order to read it.

We can’t wait to share the tour with you, and hope to see you in Chicagoland at Ch1Con and Ch21Con 2019!

– The Chapter One Events Team

2019 Conference, Ch21Con

2019 Workshop Leader: Riley Redgate!

The Chapter One Events team is ecstatic to announce our next speaker for the 2019 Chapter One Young Writers Conference and Chapter Twenty-One Conference: YA contemporary author Riley Redgate!

Riley RedgateRiley Redgate is the author of Seven Ways We Lie, Final Draft, and Noteworthy, which was named a Best Teen Book of 2017 by Kirkus and the New York Public Library. She grew up in North Carolina, majored in economics at Kenyon College, and now lives in Chicago. She has also written for The Onion, America’s Finest News Source. You can find her on Instagram @rileyredgate and Tumblr @batmansymbol.

Riley will be leading workshops at both Ch1Con and Ch21Con. Her workshop at Ch1Con will be on the topic of “Unwrapping Your Characters” and her workshop at Ch21Con will be on the topic of “Writing the Query Letter.” She will also be speaking on the conferences’ combined ask anything panel and signing books at the end of the day.

Plus, in honor of speaking, Riley has generously offered to give away a signed paperback copy of her excellent latest book, Final Draft, as well as a critique of the first five pages of your manuscript! Just click the link below to enter the raffle. We’ll leave it open for one week!

Click here by 5/2 to win a signed paperback copy of Riley Redgate’s FINAL DRAFT plus a critique of the first five pages of your novel!

Find Riley online:

Find Riley’s books on GoodReads:

Interested in attending one of our young writers’ conferences on June 29 in Des Plaines, IL (a suburb of Chicago)? You can learn more at:

We’ve got lots of other amazing speakers to announce as well in the lead-up to the 2019 conferences, so keep an eye on our websites and social media for more speaker announcements coming your way soon!!

– The Ch1Events Team