Staff photo by Connor Cummiskey The winner of the 2003 Newbery Medal, children’s author Avi, spoke to students Wednesday about his life and his books at Martin Luther College.

NEW ULM — Newbery Medal winning author Edward Wortis spoke Wednesday at Martin Luther College about his life.

Wortis, better known by his pen name Avi, stood before students with a mop of wild gray hair and a light gray turtleneck while explaining his life and work as a writer.

“What I would like to say to you, and this is important, writers do not write writing, they write reading,” Avi said.

He was born in 1937 with his twin sister Emily. They grew up in Brooklyn, going to Public School Number Eight.

Early in life he became an avid reader. Science fiction, detective novels and animal stories were some of his favorite genres.

“I can stand here and tell you that if you are interested in writing, the best way, the only way, to become a writer is to become a reader,” Avi said. “The more you read, the better a writer you become.”

After entering high school in the early 1950s, it was clear Avi was a terrible student. His teachers accused him of being sloppy and not paying attention.

His first report card showed he had failed all five classes. When it came back, his parents pulled him out of a 5,000-student school and into a smaller, private school called the Elizabeth Urban High School.

Still Avi struggled. At the end of one year at the new school, they threatened to refuse Avi reentry if he did not get a tutor over the summer.

Despite his difficulties, Avi was determined to be a writer, writing it in his diary at the time.

“I decided to become a writer,” Avi said. “I decided to become a playwright, I decided I wanted to write plays, I wanted to be a Broadway playwright.”

What he found out much later was that Avi had a learning disorder called dysgraphia. Mayo Clinic characterizes the disorder as a difficulty with handwriting, spelling and thinking and writing at the same time.

Dysgraphia made it hard for him to spell. He substitutes some words for others and is bad with numbers.

“It is a nuisance and particularly for kids, like I was, you are constantly accused of not paying attention or being sloppy, but you just do not see it,” Avi said.

Once he learned about his dysgraphia in his 40s, Avi learned to stop being so angry at his own mistakes.

Back in high school Avi persisted without that knowledge. He learned how to type and went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison. There he learned how to be a playwright.

Theater turned out not to be Avi’s path, though he did win a playwright contest his senior year of college.

He went to work as a librarian for years. Avi’s first children’s book was born from his son Shaun’s demand for stories.

“He would say things like ‘tell me a story about a hippopotamus’ and I would invent a story and then I wrote it down and that became my first book,” Avi said.

When he was published, Avi adopted his childhood nickname as an act of rebellion and vengeance.

“First of all it was my sister who gave me the name,” Avi said. “Then when I decided to become a writer my parents were opposed to my becoming a writer because they thought I was a bad writer. So to get back at them, to get my revenge, when I published my first book I did not put their name on it, I just put my name.”

Coming next month Avi will have 80 books that bear his nom de plume, after 60 years of writing.

On average, it takes Avi about a year to write each book. But he has written a book in a day, and another took 14 years of on-and-off writing to complete.

Now Avi lives in Clark, Colo., with his wife Linda, an inventor, and his malemute husky McKinley. Their back yard overlooks Hahns Peak, so named for the first gold prospector on the mountain who disappeared retrieving supplies.

Avi’s next book “The Button War” is a historical fiction novel set in a war-torn Polish village during World War I.

Find out more about his upcoming books and Avi himself at avi-writer.com.

Connor Cummiskey can be emailed at ccummiskey@nujournal.com.