Mary Amato Presentations
“Imagination is like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the
stronger it will grow.”—Mary Amato
Presentations for Children
The Writer’s Notebook: The Writer’s Notebook is an important writing tool. Mary explains the difference between diaries and writers’ notebooks, shares material from her childhood diaries as well as writer’s notebooks, shows how to this tool in the writing process, and concludes with a humorous game. Grades 3-6.
Creating Characters: How does a novelist create and develop characters? Mary shows students her strategies for developing characters and uses improvisational games to help students create and give voice to a character. Literary elements that are covered: voice, point of view, character traits, pre-writing, webbing, and self-questioning. Grades 3-6.
Story-Inventing Workshop: Students learn the 3-part trajectory of the classic story. Using theater games, they learn how to construct a story—often with hilarious results. Especially helpful for young, reluctant writers. K-3.
Author Visit: Mary takes students on a journey through the writing process. Where do ideas come from? How do journals, webs, and outlines help? Why is revising so important? How does a book get published? Mary concludes with an improvisational “revision” game. Grades 3-6.
Presentations for Adults and Young Adults
Writing Humor: Mary explores the humor-writing process and shares concrete suggestions to help writers get in touch with their inner comics.
Writing for Voice: What is “voice”? Why is it so important? How do you find it? How do you write with it? Mary analyzes and explores the concept of voice, using samples from her own work and the work of others.
Writing the Soul : Mary shares her journal-writing process.
Breaking into Print: Mary shares advice for writing and publishing articles, stories, and more.
Revising is the Real Writing: The nuts and bolts of revision for the serious writer.
Growing Writers : Mary teaches how to encourage kids to write. For
teachers, parents, and librarians.
Residencies
Mary is available for short and long term teaching residencies in fiction writing, non-fiction writing, and poetry. These sessions can be designed to support and complement specific objectives in your language arts curriculum. Contact Mary directly for more information.
Book Sales
Schools and libraries can order books in quantity at a discount from the publisher to sell. Mary will be happy to sign books. Please contact Mary for the publisher contact information and for an order-form template that you can use to prepare for her visit.
Presentation History and Recommendations (This PDF file contains a listing of presentations Mary has made along with recommendations from some of those institutions. To view this file Acrobat Reader must be installed. This download is free and available at the Adobe web site)
How to Schedule a Presentation:
Contact Mary Amato
301/585-5510 or mary.amato@starpower.net