I think the whole event was wonderful.

Time management was excellent!

Learned a lot from the presenters, especially Rob.

More mixing of people and groups would have been nice. We only really got to discuss things/interact with the people we sat near.

The advice for fiction-writing was very useful and the presentations were great!

I wish there had been more time, and/or an online interface made available before or after the training, to get to know the other attendees and start to set up groups based on genre, common interests, etc.

While I don't have any particular ideas for original fiction at present, I was hoping to learn more about possible work writing to spec for existing/upcoming series, or failing that, some information about the target demographics and/or genres that Xreading might be looking for in particular given its rather unique market (which seems to be, if I understood correctly, university students at late-beginning to intermediate proficiency?).

Overall, however, this was a great event and I'm looking forward to helping out those who decide to continue to developing their synopses and stories!

It was a great workshop! I’m doing content analysis on graded readers as part of my research at the moment, and also teach creative writing… not perhaps the intended audience but I found this really helpful. I would like to try a synopsis, if I can fix on a good idea. I need to cogitate on my morning bicycle ride…..

Had a great time at GRAPE. Learned a lot about writing for a graded reader and elements to a good story. I will definitely support GRAPE writers if I can. Will try to write stories, but not sure if I can complete the process at this time. Thanks for all the effort and hard work. Enjoy hearing from all the amazing writers.

I am interested in writing both my own stories and writing graded reader versions of extant public domain 19th century stories, especially Flaubert's Salammbo and Huysmans' Against the Grain.

I have lots of end-user experience with text-to-image AI and hope to use that for illustrations.

I hope someone at the conference can answer whether or not there are issues with (1) public domain works being re-written for Xreading and (2) using AI-generated art for illustrations.

Great event, thanks so much.

Thank you so much for organising this wonderful workshop. A little more interactive session with Dr. Waring would have been nice, but I enjoyed all the sessions.

thanks

Thank you so much for all the hard work that went into creating GRAPE. The information and resources provided are invaluable.

This was a very interesting and inspiring event and I look forward to making connections with participants and trying to write!

Would have love to have more time to discuss ideas with fellow aspiring/accomplished writers and publishers.

Thanks for a great event.

Rob’s explanation of the reason for his text heavy slides was very helpful for focusing on what he was saying rather than worrying about all of the text on each slide.

The 5 authors’ talks complimented each other much more than I expected. Kudos to the effort that must have gone into aligning the talks with each other.

Something that didn’t go so well:

Getting to know other participants wasn’t so easy. There was enough time/space to talk with about 3-4 people. I understand the time constraints, but for the future budgeting a good hour to talk about book ideas in rotating groups would give people a better idea of who they would like to work with for peer review.

I feel like I learned SO MUCH from all the presenters, thank you!

The presentations were fantastic. Rob Waring's presentation was absolutely brilliant! I also enjoyed listening to self-publishers describe their challenges and experiences, inspiring!

More time to share story ideas in groups

Great information! Thank you very much!

Thank you so much. It was very well organized and very informative. Every presenter had something valuable to share.

The whole event was very well done.

Meeting other participants

It was too short!! I felt it packed so much information in a small amount of time. I enjoyed it but if there was a way to interact with each other first, that would have given it a less “teacher-fronted” feel

If you have something for those looking to write some short creative stories, that will be great.

It was a wonderful event, and as someone who writes novel length fiction a lot as a hobby, it was great to see a lot of the same advice for writing stories and characters be repeated with regards to how to write an interesting and engaging stories for graded readers. I'd be very interested in joining a future similar endeavor if ever there is one, but don't have the time to put my full passion into this as I'd like.