Authors’ Booking Service is pleased to announce that children’s and YA author Marina Cohen, is now scheduling visits to Ontario schools for the coming school year.   

Marina Cohen would love to plan a visit to your school or library.  Her rate is $200.00 per session, plus travel from Markham, Ontario.

Marina is a part-time teacher in the York Region District School Board.  She wrote the first draft of her first novel, a science-based fantasy about boy/girl twins in 2002—two years prior to giving birth to her own boy/girl twins.  It took five long years of re-writing, editing and submitting to various publishers before she finally received her first contract.  Marina’s bibliography and details of her presentation follow this message.

Here is what Melissa Wills of Glad Park had to say about a recent visit:

  
Marina is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada, and so schools wishing to invite her may be eligible for a travel and fee subsidy to off-set the cost of her visit. For details of this program, please contact us.
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I like to begin my presentation by asking students what genre they like to read.  I tell them that when I was their age, the only genre I enjoyed reading was horror—the scarier the better.  Writing was no different.  I got top marks at Halloween because I could write the scariest ghost stories in the class, but when it came to History and Math, the teachers were less impressed when I kept finding ways to insert my ghostly ideas.  Of course Science was most challenging and though I truly couldn’t find a way to sneak in any ghosts, I could talk about the planets, and the solar system and the universe and certainly about—aliens! 

Next, I share the story of how I came to be a published author—something that took years of thinking, months of writing, even more months of re-writing and editing, years of rejection, even a few tears, before I finally received my first contract.  The message:  never give up—making your dreams come true is hard work! 

I like to do a short interactive exercise in writing suspenseful scenes.  Using drama as well as language, and student participation, I illustrate several techniques.  This leads to me reading a suspenseful passage from my novel. 

I like to close with a question and answer period and then hand out autographed postcards to each student. 
 

I will present to grades 4-12.

Maximum number of students per session: 150, but again this is flexible and I can tailor my presentations to suit larger audiences.

Workshops available: a more in-depth look at the writing techniques used to create suspense for grades 4-12.

Maximum participants for workshop: one class (30)

I also offer:

Professional Development Workshops

Grade 12 Writers' Craft Workshops

I am comfortable in a classroom, library, auditorium or gymnasium.