Leila Sales
If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say
You wrote a different quote on your locker every week in high school. If you had to pick the quote that stayed with you the longest, which would it be?
My favorite quote about writing is from Brenda Ueland: “I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten—happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.”
My favorite anytime quote is probably this one from Oscar Wilde: “If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”
In If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, Winter makes some big mistakes online and faces some big consequences. If you could give teens one piece of advice about navigating the online world, what would it be?
I’m going to give two pieces for advice. First, don’t post anything that you wouldn’t want seen by everybody. Second, remember that everything you see on social media has been curated and filtered in some way; it is never an accurate depiction of reality. I have a bunch more tips here, if you want more.
Our festival slogan is “Read Everything!” What book would you like to see on our official Read Everything list for 2018?
Does it need to be a 2018 pub? If no, then I’d propose EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL IS NOT RUINED, by Danielle Younge-Ullman. If yes, then I’d recommend Ijeoma Oluo’s SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT RACE.