- From writing workshops to author and illustrator discussion panels, street painting and music acts, the BAM Festival has ignited a passion for words and pictures in our community, making literature fun!
- BAM! Books, art, and music convention for authors, illustrators, and performers who write for children and young adults, provides a county-wide literary experience bringing together authors, teachers, students, families, and the community to share their love of books.
[As published in West Palm Beach Magazine.]
yan Snider enjoys writing and creating stories. Like most writers, Snider’s passion for reading and writing started at a very young age. “My fourth-grade teacher helped my brother and me by spurring our creativity, igniting a passion in us that we really didn’t know we had. Ever since then, we have been writing all kinds of stories.”
A Palm Beach Central sophomore, Snider, 16, won last year’s BAM Festival’s Flash Fiction Contest, part of a writing workshop which made it possible for him to publish his first novel, Seventy Meters, about a kid named Dylan Stone who lives in a floating city over Atlantis. What inspired his idea? It just popped into his head one day, he says. “I did some research and found out that if all the ice on the earth melted through global warming, from the Antarctic to the Arctic, the sea level would rise 70 meters. So, I got my title and built the story from that.”
The intense writing workshop challenges young minds to think outside the box. It also boasts a chance for a local kid to win a mentorship and publication with one of their authors. “It’s extremely difficult to ask any writer to come up with a story idea within 30 minutes, but it does activate your creativity,” says author, Stephen Kozan, one of the presenters of BAM’s Flash Fiction awards.
As the author of The Great Green Tree and the Magical Ladders, Town, and The Journal of a Lifetime, he knows how difficult it is to break into the book industry, and wants to give kids like Snider a leg up. This year’s winner is Caitlyn de la Cruces, whose flash fiction one-page submission wowed the judges, including Kozan. “All the students who participated showed that [creativity],” he explains. “Sadly, the panel could only select one winner, even though they all had immense talent. It’s not about what’s good or what’s bad, it’s about what’s more creative.”
De la Cruces will be working on her novel for the next six to seven months. [Read more]