Need an author for a school visit or student writing workshop? A speaker for a writer’s or educator’s conference? How about a keynote presentation for your women’s group or professional organization? You’ve come to the right place: I’ve got Matilda Effect themed programs for all interests and age levels.
If this sounds like what you’re looking for, contact me ASAP to secure your preferred dates. Fall 2026 availability is extremely limited, and I’m already booking into 2027.
School Visits and Other Programs for Kids
How Women Get Erased From History
Have you ever done something amazing… and someone else took credit? In science and engineering, men getting credit for women’s achievements is called the Matilda Effect, but erasure happens to women in the arts, sports, politics, and more. In this program, we’ll explore six mechanisms of erasure using examples from The Matilda Effect: How 25 Women Were Erased From History. Then we’ll take a deeper dive into one mechanism – disinformation – by comparing two depictions of Two Gun Nan: an exclusive deleted scene from The Matilda Effect, and an episode of the 1950s TV series Death Valley Days. Bonus: an action plan for ending the Matilda Effect!
Audience: Grades 4 and up
Eating Their Words: How to Write Found, Erasure, and Blackout Poetry
How can poets overcome blank-page paralysis? By starting with a page full of words! In this workshop, we’ll define and explore three types of poems that begin from existing works. First, we’ll play with found poetry, using a handful of words offered by the text to write something new. Next, we’ll experiment with erasure and blackout techniques, writing poems that respond to, challenge, or subvert the meaning of the original text. Erasure poems from The Matilda Effect will be offered as examples; as starting points for their own poems, participants are encouraged to bring printed-out passages from books, websites, or articles that inspire or enrage them.
Audience: Grades 4 and up (adults included!)
For Educators
One Book, Many Stories:
How Biography Collections Span Curriculum and Support Multiple Literacies
Unlike picture book biographies, which typically focus on a single person, biography collections include multiple life stories centred on a particular theme. One collection may span multiple time periods and far-flung geographic locations, while spotlighting people with a variety of backgrounds, life experiences, or areas of expertise. As a result of this diversity, the stories in a biography collection often connect to multiple curriculum strands within a single grade, offering opportunities for integrated learning and the development of multiple literacies. One collection might also support curriculum outcomes across multiple grades—a bonus when budgets are tighter than ever! In this session, we’ll explore opportunities for STEM, social studies, language arts, critical literacy, and social-emotional learning provided by The Matilda Effect: How 25 Women Were Erased From History (grades 3-7). Attendees will receive a bibliography of recent women’s history collections for young readers, and a checklist for identifying high-quality collections to use in the classroom.
For Adult Writers
Facing Facts: Advanced Research Skills for Nonfiction Writers
Books (and other secondary sources) are a good place to start research, but primary sources are the gold standard. Make your nonfiction sparkle by including information no book has ever mentioned before! In this workshop, I’ll teach you how to find and acquire peer-reviewed papers—without paying $26 a pop! You’ll also learn the best way to read these articles: picking out key points without bogging down in detail. Next, we’ll cover strategies for identifying (and interviewing) the experts whose insights aren’t available anywhere else.
You’ll also have the chance to ask questions about any aspect of research, receiving expert advice for approaching challenges in your own work.
Keynote Speeches
Six Ways to Erase a Woman from History
Throughout history, women’s contributions have been overlooked, overshadowed or outright stolen by men in their fields. In science and engineering, this is known as the Matilda Effect, after 19th century feminist-and-force-of-nature, Matilda Joslyn Gage. But it happens to women in the arts, sports, politics and more, and, while overt, “men getting credit” is only one of six ways that women are routinely erased from the historical record. In this program, we’ll explore disinformation, disguise, self-erasure, and top-secret examples from The Matilda Effect: How 25 Women Were Erased from History. We’ll also give a serious side-eye to the underlying isms: the attitudes and prejudices that make people think it’s OK to dismiss women’s contributions (and women themselves) both in history and in the present day.
Intended Audience: Women’s conferences and professional organizations, Women’s and Gender Studies departments
Listening to the Lost: How to Recover the Stories of Women Erased from History
In 1909, Hertha Ayrton wrote that “An error that ascribes to a man what was actually the work of a woman has more lives than a cat.” Misattributed (or stolen) credit is just one form of erasure that women have experienced, throughout history and around the world. To hear their lost voices, researchers much be critical, creative, and too stubborn to quit.
The Matilda Effect: How 25 Women Were Erased from History draws on more than 470 academic books, peer-reviewed articles, historical newspapers, archives, letters and diaries, patent records, and court transcripts. In researching the project, I encountered historians who deciphered 3000-year-old languages, dissected 12th-century “Wikipedia entries,” and dismantled archival silences surrounding 19th-century Black women inventors. This presentation describes how I teased fact from folklore to recover a truer history of Qutulun (ca. 1260-1306), warrior princess of the Mongol Empire. Attendees will receive a checklist for identifying red flags in published accounts of erased women and other people on the fringes of mainstream history.
Intended Audience: writers, librarians, scholars and students in Women’s and Gender Studies departments