Mary Winn loves doing school and library visits! If you’d like to have her talk to your students, there are a range of options below. Rates available on request.
INTERACTIVE PRESENTATIONS
45-60 minutes/3rd-8th grade/any size group
The Mortification of Fovea Munson from Page to Stage
When Mary Winn started working in a cadaver lab, she definitely didn’t think that she was going to write a book about it. And she definitely, definitely didn’t think that a few years later, she’d be listening to actors singing the words “oooh gross dead bodies…yeah!” in the musical based on that book. She’ll tell the story of how Fovea became a book first, and then a musical, and she’ll talk about all the forms of creative collaboration along the way—how we can create with and learn from each other in really cool, surprising ways.
The Blank Page
There’s a joke about how the scariest thing in the entire world for a writer is a blank page. Why? Because when you’re looking at that blank page, all you can think about is all the ways you’re going to mess up. You have a perfect idea in your head, but the moment you start writing, it’s going to be a disaster. You’re going to fail, says the voice in your head. But maybe…it’s not that bad to fail? Mary Winn had that voice in her head, too, and it wasn’t until she learned how to be okay with failure that she started writing things she loved. In this presentation, she shares the story of how her ideas become books, and all the ways that not being afraid of failure has helped her process, from revising a manuscript to including her real life disasters in her stories.
WRITING WORKSHOPS
45 minutes/3rd-6th grade/small group
Finding Your Funny Bone
When Mary Winn was a kid, she didn’t think she was very funny. She thought it was just something you were or you weren’t—and that she wasn’t. It took her a while to understand that actually everybody’s funny, just in their own way. This workshop is a crash course in trying out different kinds of humor writing, and experimenting with techniques for making people laugh.
How Writing is Like a Cadaver Lab
Mary Winn worked in a cadaver lab. Sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it was fun. She thinks the exact same things can be said about writing books. In this workshop, she’ll lead students through writing exercises while drawing parallels to what goes on in a cadaver lab like the one in The Mortification of Fovea Munson.
BOOK CLUB VISITS
Up to 60 minutes/3rd-8th grade/small group
A conversation with readers about the themes of the story (and also about the process of writing it), focusing on any of Mary Winn’s books.
