Author: Marsha

I write historical fiction, mostly from the perspective of young people who are thrust in the midst of war.

World Read-Aloud Day 2023

Eleven schools on WRAD23. The 2 in Texas were snowed out (stay safe and warm my friends) and one school was late, but by luck that coincided with a snowed out school, so all good. In addition to Winterkill I talked about Sylvia McNicoll’s What the Dog Knows and Adrian Lysenko’ s Five Stalks of Grain, and then showed the best nonfiction written about the Holodomor, Anne Applebalm’s Red Famine. 

Educator feedback:

“Thank you for reading aloud to my fifth and sixth graders today. It was fabulous. We now have a waiting list for Making Bombs for Hitler and for Winterkill.“

“Thank you so much for Zooming with us this morning. The excerpt you read was powerful and I anticipate Winterkill being checked out for the foreseeable future! Thank you for shining a light on this lesser known piece of history.”

“We enjoyed hearing you read from Winterkill and learning so much about your writing process.”

Thanks again for visiting with us! Every single one of your books that I have are checked out to students now! Success! 

OLA Superconference: signing two books

Library professionals and educators! Are you going to next week’s conference? It’s so wonderful to be doing this in person again. I’ll be signing two books there, so come and say hello. Fitzhenry & Whiteside has just reissued the third redesigned and updated edition of Silver Threads, and I’ll also be signing Winterkill at the Scholastic booth.

Sweet! Meeting with Saint Vincent students

It was such a pleasure to speak with 6th grade students from Saint Vincent Elementary School in Concord PQ! Such thought-provoking questions about the Holodomor and Winterkill but also about the process of writing and how I feel about the books that I wrote ages ago — would I like to go back and change them? I particularly appreciated the question about why an author like me would get hate mail and death threats for writing about the Holodomor. It provided the opportunity to describe intimidation tactics used by oppressive regimes to control information and to deny history. It’s not just politicians and protesters who are treated this way. Writers and journalists are key targets too.

First visit of 2023

The wonderful Ms Bartholomew invited me to Riverside Elementary, Suwanee Georgia, for two back to back visits this morning. I think this is the third time I’ve visited Riverside and always, the students are such a pleasure to speak with. Thank you, Ms Bartholomew and Riverside educators for your great prepping!

I didn’t think to ask for a photo until the second session was almost over — that should tell you how excited I was to get back in the class with students after the holiday break. This spring I have a number of in person visits scheduled and I’m really looking forward to that.

Look at these smiling faces!

Koota Ooma!

It was great popping in to Koota Ooma Ukrainian Book and gift store this past Wednesday on my way home from Toronto after an informative brain-picking session with with two knowledgeable academics for my novel-in-progress. I offered to sign any of my books that Koota Ooma had on hand, thinking they might have a half a dozen or so. Much to my delight, they had a PILE — and a great variety! The first pen ran out of ink! So, if you’re looking for an autographed copy of Winterkill etc, you know where to get it!

I also did some shopping. Look at those beautiful necklaces! And picked up a fantastic book, The Zelensky Effect. You can get one too — an autographed copy, no less because later on Wednesday, author Olga Onuch had her book launch!