An inspiring story about UW–Madison alumnus Edward Wortis appears in the Winter 2021 issue of On Wisconsin magazine.
Wortis, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Department of Theatre and Drama, has struggled through his lifetime with dysgraphia, a neurological disorder that impairs the ability to write. Despite this, he yearned to be an author.
Under the pen name Avi, Wortis has written more than 80 bestselling children’s books and earned top honors in the field, including a Newbery Medal for “Crispin: The Cross of Lead” and Newbery honor awards for “The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle” and “Nothing but the Truth.”
Wortis told On Wisconsin that he credits a UW–Madison playwrighting contest with helping him figure out he might have what it takes to be a writer.
The first year he entered the contest, he lost. “The professor who judged the contest wrote a comment on my manuscript,” said Wortis. “It said, ‘This is not a very good play, but the author is to be congratulated. He is clearly not a native English speaker and is making good progress with the English language.’ ”
Many might be discouraged after such a devastating insult, but not Wortis, writes On Wisconsin. “He entered the playwriting contest the next year and, amazingly, won.”
Megan Schliesman, a librarian at the School of Education’s Cooperative Children’s Book Center, shared her thoughts on what makes Wortis’s works special.
“One of the many things Avi does so well is to create an immersive experience for readers, transporting them into the time and place of his stories,” she said. “He does this through marvelous details of setting but also with stylistic choices, judiciously using old-fashioned language in ‘The Seer of Shadows,’ a ghost story set in the 19th century, or writing ‘Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway?’ all in dialogue to echo the mid-20th-century radio adventure programs that were its inspiration. These decisions he makes regarding style are often as important as specific details he incorporates as he builds the world his characters — and readers — inhabit.”
Read more about Wortis’s “Rocky Road to Literary Success” at uwalumni.com.