CHICAGO - Susan Cain and John Green, authors and speakers with huge followings, join the roster of memorable ALA Midwinter Meeting Auditorium Speakers. Both are scheduled to appear at the Dallas meeting the weekend of Jan. 21 and 22, 2012.

Studies suggest that many of the most creative people are introverts, partly because of their capacity for quiet and tolerance for the solitude that idea generation requires. Susan Cain — author of the forthcoming "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking" (Crown, January 2012) — will talk about how dramatically our culture misunderstands and undervalues introverts in this increasingly social world. She will address, based on the latest psychology and neuroscience, why she considers these to be advantageous traits. She will offer a perceptive critique of collaboration and outline a plethora of practical skills such as how to network if you hate small talk and how to modulate your personality according to circumstance.

Cain blogs at ThePowerofIntroverts.com and is author of a “most e-mailed” New York Times article on the value of shyness and introversion. Her work has been compared to Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Pink. Her appearance is sponsored by Random House.

Sunday’s Auditorium Speaker, New York Times best-selling YA author John Green, is well-known for his thoughtful, entertaining presentations and is wildly popular among librarians. He will address how social networking relates to literature and how librarians can reach patrons through fun and inventive social networking. An unparalleled social networker himself, Green has more than 1,125,000 Twitter followers while his Vlogbrothers YouTube channel has 500,000 subscribers and almost 125 million downloads. It is in the top 100 most subscribed channels of all time on YouTube and is consistently in the top 100 most viewed daily videos.

Green’s appearance at Midwinter, sponsored by Penguin Young Readers, kicks off the tour for his upcoming book, "The Fault in Our Stars" (Dutton /January 2012), which has already received wide attention following his YouTube announcement that he would personally sign the entire first print run.  Booklist’s Books for Youth Senior Editor, noted author and acknowledged Green mentor Ilene Cooper interviews him in January about "The Fault in Our Stars." The interview will appear online at Booklist Online and in the January issue of Booklist magazine (which attendees can pick up in the exhibits at booth # 1517). Attendees can also find out from the editors what it was really like working with Green, whose first job out of college was as a Booklist editorial assistant.

Find out about the many other Midwinter Meeting highlights as they are added. And for more general information about the meeting in Dallas, Jan. 20-24, 2012, visit www.alamidwinter.org.  Early bird registration saves you money and is open until Friday, Dec. 2.

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