Marina Cohen visits SAM

On Friday January 28, SAM hosted Red Maple author Marina Cohen. She delivered two high intensity presentations to both grade 7s and grade 8s. Marina spoke energetically and was well received by the students and staff at SAM.

Marina's book Ghost Ride has been nominated for this year's Red Maple award. For those of you who were expecting her to talk about this book, you were in for a big surprise. While she did mention this book, Marina mostly spoke about the process she went through to become a published writer.Interestingly she made it clear that while being a writer has been a lifelong dream of hers, it is not something that came easily. In fact, Marina pointed out that from early on in her life, she was not an avid reader, as so many writers seem to be. In fact, she was more of a reluctant reader, only getting into reading when she discovered the dark, horrific writings of such authors as Edgar Allan Poe.

Marina went on to describe the many failures she endured along the way to becoming a published writer. She even read to us from the many rejection letters she has received.

Despite the numerous rejections, and despite the many times she quit writing altogether, Marina always came back to her dream. She didn't let it go, and finally her first book was accepted for publication. Which of course lead to her second book, and then to Ghost Ride.

Marina kept her audience's attention with her enthusiastic vocals and she even had some time at the end for some audience participation. Enlisting the aid of two students in each presentation, she illustrated some writing techniques through the acting out of a simple scene.

Check out the pictures from the grade 8 presentation:

Johnny is acting out the scene as described by Marina. Vanessa is doing an awesome job of creating the

sound effects to go with the scene.

As her presentation was wrapping up, Marina took the time to give away some prizes to audience members who had listened well to what she had said.

We all had a great time listening to Marina, and learning about the large amount of work that is necessary to not only write a book, but get it published.

If you want to find out more about Marina Cohen you can visit her website: http://www.marinacohen.com/

Thank you, Mrs. Gassi for enabling us to have Marina visit our school.