On Feb. 27, Liberty was visited by Meredith Tate, the author of The Last Confession of Autumn Casterly. She had an author’s talk with a small group of students in the Library during fifth hour with Mrs. Steinbruegge’s Creative Writing I class and Mr. Hall’s Magazine class. She shared lots of information about her writing and publishing process through references to famous movie and TV show characters.

Mrs. Steinbruegge was excited to see Mrs. Tate’s presentation with her class because she hoped there would be useful information for her Creative Writing students.

“I really have been wondering for my students who want to get published, what’s that process like? She was very generous in sharing the two different processes from her two different books, how she went about getting those published so that was some good info,” Mrs. Steinbruegge said.

Mrs. Tate gave her presentation at Liberty, Fort Zumwalt West and Francis Howell Central before going to her main event at 7 p.m. at Spencer Road Library Branch. All three schools and the public library were able to have Mrs. Tate as a speaker because of a woman named Emily Hall who runs Main Street Books in St. Charles. She reaches out to authors and invites them to the St Charles area to talk with fans and other book lovers at nearby schools and libraries.

Mrs. Tate shared with students some personal wins and losses she had while writing her previous books and these struggles resonated with some of the students in the library with her that day. Her struggles particularly resonated with Elizabeth Hamby, a reporter for the school magazine.

“I’ve always wanted to write my own book,” Hamby said. “I’ve always come up with ideas and I guess she gave me validation because she has this manuscript that she says she’s written on and she’s just put aside because she can’t add anything to it. I feel like I may have given up a little bit of hope because I have so many ideas that don’t go far and I think she gave me a lot of hope for writing in general.” 

Meredith Tate always wanted to write but wasn’t sure if she wanted to do it as a career. It was always a hobby of hers and when she finished grad school, she would come home from work and write just to kill some time. She eventually turned her hobby into a career but it was after she already graduated college to be a therapist that she found what she wanted to do.

“When I was in high school, I bounced around a lot. I love editing videos. For a while, I wanted to pursue a career in cinematography,” Mrs. Tate said. “I was from the northeast and what kind of killed that dream was learning that there were no good colleges in the northeast that specialized in that and I would have to go to school far away and I did not want to do that. I still do video editing on the side, as a hobby.” 

As life goes on, people grow and change. High schoolers especially seem to have so much pressure on them to figure out a career path right out of school but the plans we make will always change and grow with us. No matter how we try to steer a straight course, there will always be something that comes into our lives to shake things up. It’s important to have a plan to keep us going forward but we should still encourage and embrace change. It’s all we can do.