Dear Secondary ELA Leaders and Educators:

This is your invitation to connect your students with bestselling author mentors like Neal Shusterman, Marissa Meyer, Jeff Kinney, Dhonielle Clayton, Christopher Paolini, and more than 80 more top authors and industry professionals!

At Operation Literacy, 501c3 Nonprofit, we join with educators in our efforts to inspire young writers and readers and empower them to tell their own unique stories. For years, we’ve brought you Teen and Tween Author Boot Camp as some of the nation’s largest writing conferences for kids. Educators like To build upon this program and ensure greater impact and access for your students, we’ve merged the two conferences, adding programming tracks for educators and general audiences to form StoryCon, held February 21st and 22nd, 2025, at the Salt Palace Convention Center

At StoryCon your students will:

* Connect - with our powerful community of aspiring and bestselling authors. (See our full list of headliners at Storycon.orghttp://storycon.org/) * Create - by learning skills that empower students to tell their authentic stories in our amazing list of Teen Classes * Become - the author, playwright, screenwriter, game developer, journalist, or storyteller they’ve always wanted to be.

While students learn and celebrate story, teachers and librarians may attend a two-day educator conference track. This includes classes and keynotes taught by internationally bestselling authors, networking opportunities, a vast expo hall of bookish and education-focused vendors, giveaways, and up to 5 SUU graduate credits for attendees.

Access and equity, especially for students from Title 1 populations, is at the core of our mission. To make StoryCon affordable for students of all backgrounds, we’ve accumulated a vast array of funding resourceshttp://storycon.org/schoolfunding including scholarships, school group discounts with free educator passes, pre-written funding application letters, and more.

In addition to StoryCon as a one-time event, we’ve created additional programs to help embed the joy of literacy into your programs year-round.

* Writing Contestshttps://www.storycon.org/contests: Students may enter First Chapter and First Line contests, receiving positive feedback from industry professionals, as well as applying to be published in our short story and poetry anthologies. * StoryCon Book Clubhttps://www.storycon.org/bookclub: Free Virtual author visits for Teens and Tweens kicking off September 18th with Gary D. Schmidt and Yamile Saied Méndez * TABC Classroomhttps://www.tabcclassroom.com/: We’re offering educators a free year’s subscription to the TABC Classroom Vault - a collection of 14 years of conference classes and keynotes, with common-core-aligned lesson plans to use with your students. Email cco@operationliteracy.orgmailto:cco@operationliteracy.org for more information.

We’re committed to partnering with you to lighten your load and elevate the culture of literacy in your schools and communities.

For more information, follow us on Instagramhttp://instagram.com/storyconusa or Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61562245004357 or visit StoryCon.orghttp://storycon.org/.

We’d love to send you printed flyers and a poster for your classroom. Please request those by filling out the form at the bottom of our StoryCon Educator pagehttp://storycon.org/educator.

Attached resources include:

* A printable poster for hanging in the classroom * ¼-sheet flyers for printing and distribution * Full Educator Guide

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