As an author, one of the things I would most like to do is connect with schools and libraries to help encourage the love of reading in kids. It’s not always easy to find schools looking to bring in authors, though.

The mission of Authors in Real Life (Authors IRL) will be connecting schools, libraries, conferences, events, etc with authors. Our index of speakers will be searchable by geographic location, the speaker’s expertise, topics covered in their books, and diversity tags, too. I want to make it easier for schools looking to bring in marginalized writer to find them, and I also want to make it harder for conferences to claim they can’t.

Right now this project is in the nascent stages of its development, so your feedback could help shape the directions the project takes. If you are an author, librarian, teacher, school representative, or event organizer, could you take a couple of minutes to fill out the survey below? I would greatly appreciate it. <3