Author: Marsha

I had the pleasure of visiting Arthurs MS in person in 2019 and so it was really neat to catch up with them again, albeit virtually. Those kids are now in high school but it was great to see the same wonderful educators and another crop of avid readers, including Alex, who described himself as my biggest fan. Also, they used the same Welcome Marsha sign! How cool is that?

Here are my fave questions from this session:

In Winterkill, Auntie Pawlina’s songbook is destroyed by the shockworkers. In real life, what was the fate of her collected songs?

Why were you banned by Russia?

When you write a novel, do you use an outline?

Why does Russia hate Ukraine?

I like to leave lots of room for questions when presenting to students and this morning’s questions were superb! The topic was Winterkill, set during the Holodomor. Plus, I always talk about my own struggles as a kid, for example not reading til I was 9, and being bullied. Here are some of my favorite questions of the day:

If the Holodomor was such a huge event, how was it possible to hide it?

How did you deal with the bullying, and were you able to get it to stop?

Did you ever regret writing your first book about the Holodomor (Enough), seeing as you were subjected to so much hate because of it?