Katie Eder

Katie Eder is the founder and executive director of Kids Tales Inc. Kids Tales is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), that offers creative writing workshops to underserved kids around the country and globe. Check out Kids Tales' website, kidstales.org.

Kids Tales teaches kids the fundamentals of writing in order to better develop their communication, creative, and life skills. Kids spend around ten hours, over the course of one week, brainstorming, writing, and editing/revising a short story. They learn how to begin a story, what the body of the story needs, and how to close it. In addition to this, Kids Tales teaches skills such as sentence structure, how to properly write dialogue, craft sensory detail, and includes lessons that are too seldom included in language arts curricula today. At the end of the week, all the stories from each individual workshop are compiled and self-published. These are the books from all of the Kids Tales workshops. Also, check out the Kids Tales Students Writers page.

The kids that take Kids Tales workshops would normally not have an educational opportunity outside of school. Many of them have never even owned their own journal before taking the Kids Tales workshop. They often don't get to do much writing in their normal classroom, and when they do, it is not on a topic of their choosing. Kids Tales lets them write about whatever they want, which not only allows kids to express themselves creatively, but also gives them a new understanding of the importance and benefits of writing and reading.

Through Amazon's self-publishing services, Kids Tales students become published authors. They are able to search their names on Amazon and come up as authors.

Kids Tales teaches in public schools and other non-profits in the greater Milwaukee area, Chicago, Washington D.C., and has taught abroad in Colombia, South America.