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Librarians are Heroes and Other Thoughts on the 2023 American Library Association Conference in Chicago
Book bans, free speech, equality, LGBTQ+ rights and Pride was the focus
This year was my first to attend the ALA Conference. Thankfully, it was in Chicago, which made for a fairly easy, affordable trip for an author living in Kansas. I was supposed to take the Southwest Chief Amtrak train out there, but the train tracks washed out in a flash flood the night before, and I had a BPD meltdown over it, which I wrote about it here:
Everything worked out fine, of course. Even though I don’t like the obnoxiousness of flying anymore, I did manage to fly out there without too much annoyance.
Boy, was it worth it. I’d never been to an American Library Association Conference. Let me tell you what it’s like: it’s the biggest conference space you can imagine, full of prestigious exhibitors like the Library of Congress, NASA, and of course all the big book publishers — Scholastic, Penguin Random House, Disney, etc.
