The Illinois Young Author's Conference is a 43 year old conference for kindergarten through 8th grade students across the state of Illinois. This wonderful conference, where students get to spend the day living out their dreams of meeting and learning the craft from published authors, is a once in a lifetime experience. In fact, many particpants in Young Author's have gone on to become published authors themselves. At this event student writing is celebrated and honored in its purest form. Unfortunately, due to state funding budget cuts we no longer have enough money to run the conference for next year, meaning that 2017 will be the last year of the conference. It would be a devastating loss to the children of the state of Illinois who love writing and dream of becoming real authors one day. We need to raise at least $30,000 to make this conference possible for next year to pay for the expense of facilities rental and author honorariums. As educators and advocates for literacy, we would be eternally grateful for any amount of money you could donate to keep this opportunity for the young writers of Illinois.

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