Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Marsha tricked her teachers into thinking she knew how to read until it all caught up with her in grade 4 when she failed the provincial reading exam. Adding insult to injury, they made her repeat the whole year. As the tallest and oldest kid in the class, she didn't want to be seen learning to read with little skinny books and she was too proud to ask for help, so she taught herself how to read by taking out the fattest book in the children's section of the Brantford Public Library -- Oliver Twist. She kept on renewing it for a whole year.

Reading that book was a turning point in her life. She decided that she loved reading big fat fiction, and wanted to write it too. She devoured novels by the gallon.

Her grade 10 English teacher sent her to the vice principal's office because she asked too many questions in class. She was placed in enriched English as punishment and loved every minute of it. She took a degree in English at the University of Western Ontario. She needed a language option to complete her degree but she wasn't very good in French so she stupidly signed up for Russian. Everyone else in Russian class was a native speaker and Marsha didn't even know the alphabet. She made herself flash cards and practiced each morning on the bus as she went to school. She got the lowest mark in the class, but she did pass!

Upon graduating, she backpacked around Europe, and then took the first job she could get when she got home: selling industrial supplies. She was the first woman in Canada to sell industrial supplies. Marsha taught herself how to design grinding wheels, recommend drills and so on.

While selling industrial supplies was interesting, Marsha never forgot her first dream, which was to become an author. She went back to school and got her Master's degree in library science, figuring this would help her with research techniques. She worked as a librarian for a brief time, but then turned her hand to writing.

After 100 rejections, her first book was published in 1996. More than 10 have been published since.