Blogger Brunch with The YA Room & Lili Wilkinson

So last weekend, I was lucky enough to be invited to a Blogger Brunch in the city by The YA Room, featuring the one and only Lili Wilkinson to celebrate the launch of her new book After the Lights Go Out. 

I thought I would share some of the cute photos I took and a little bit about what we discussed.

First, here’s the official blurb for After the Lights Go Out. It sounds amazing and I’m 100% picking it up in-store next time I walk by my local bookstore.

Seventeen-year-old Pru Palmer lives with her twin sisters, Grace and Blythe, and their father, Rick, on the outskirts of an isolated mining community. The Palmers are doomsday preppers. They have a bunker filled with non-perishable food and a year’s worth of water. Each of the girls has a ‘bug out bag’, packed with water purification tablets, protein bars, paracord bracelets and epipens for Pru’s anaphylaxis.

One day while Rick is at the mine, the power goes out. At the Palmers’ house, and in the town. No one knows why. All communication is cut. It doesn’t take long for everything to unravel. In town, supplies run out and people get desperate. The sisters decide to keep their bunker a secret. The world is different; the rules are different. Survival is everything, and family comes first.

How freaking interesting does a book about doomsday preppers sound?? I didn’t even know it was a serious thing in real life, but now that I do, what an awesome topic Lili picked! As a supervisor for Master students studying creative writing, she must be exposed to so many ideas for her own book writing and I personally find it so inspiring that she’s basically helping to shape future authors we could possibly become obsessed with.

We chatted a lot about what inspired her to write the novel, which turned out to be an extremely badly written book, full of unfortunate sexist ways, that’s actually worshipped by the real community of doomsday preppers in America! With more discussions on pushing the boundaries of fiction and whether a zombie apocalypse was better than a deadly virus outbreak, to chatting about how she came about the name of her characters, the brunch was mighty fun.

It was also just super fun catching up with some of my blogger and booktuber friends I hardly ever see (probably cause I hardly ever leave my house except to you know, work for a living.). Here are some selfies and the group photo I took from the event. I look forward to more bookish brunch events in the future. Thank you, Sarah and Alex, from The YA Room!

Until next time,

Xx Tracy

PS: Yes. That’s me. My hair is pink. Salmon pink and I love it. Literally, every display picture I have on every social media platform is now outdated since I changed the colour a few weeks ago 😛 I’m so not motivated enough to try to take a new photo though.

Image source: Goodreads