Margaret Bartley, has a Master's of Creative Writing degree from Johns Hopkins University and is a freelance writer living in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. Her book GRISHA: The Story of Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky won the 2005 Adirondack Literary Award. She is the editor of Otis Mountain Press and is a frequent contributor to Adirondack Life Magazine. Her work has also been published in Vermont Life, Strings, and Yoga Journal. For inspiration she plays the cello and practices yoga.

At the 2007 Adirondack Mountain Writers' Retreat Margaret presented a three-hour workshop titled "Point of View: Letting Your Characters Speak", appropriate for adult writers who are interested in writing short or long fiction or creative non-fiction that is character-driven. Her novel was used as a model for creating dynamic characters. Participants brought to the workshop a copy of a published biography or autobiography (any person they were interested in), to use as a resource for creating a profile character. By using a real person as a model for a fictional or nonfictional character, the students had the neccessary details for workshop writing.

Margaret also sat on the Adirondack Mountain Writers' Retreat and Story Workshops "Getting Published" panel and discussed what it takes to start an independent publishing company and how it differs from self publishing. She told how to take a book from manuscript to print and described the marketing process.

She performed a dramatic reading from her book GRISHA at the Fiction Among Friends Story Concert.

What others have said about Margaret Bartley:
"...magnificent work.... You are lucky to have her!"
Martin Kirschenbaum,
www.soundoftheturtle.com

To learn more about Margaret's work, visit www.otismountainpress.com .