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At the Writing Institute, Westchester Author Annabel Monaghan Will Read Excerpts From Her New Novel

Passages from a new novel about the adventures of a fictional character called "Digit" will be read by author Annabel Monaghan, a Rye resident, at the Sarah Lawrence College Center for Continuing Education on Thursday, March 6 from 3 to 5 p.m. 

Admission to this event is free. 

Digit, so-named because she was a math genius and computer geek/whiz, is an 18-year-old, high-school graduate from Los Angeles named Farrah Higgins who is enrolled at MIT as the new novel"Double Digit" begins.

Released on January 7, 2014, "Double Digit" is a sequel to Monaghan's first book "A Girl Named Digit," published on June 5, 2012.

In her reading appearance at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, Monaghan is also expected to provide insight as to how her books caught the attention of a publisher and how a deal with the Disney Channel was brokered to produce a movie based on the first novel. 

"The idea for the plot for the first book came one day when I was talking with a teenager who was babysitting my kids," Monaghan said. 

"There had been a kidnapping of a teenager in the news, and my babysitter said, 'what if the whole thing had been a fake?'" Monaghan continued. 

"It really got me thinking—how interesting it would be to be in high school and have your whole school think you'd been kidnapped while you were perfectly safe and off doing something cool. That made me wonder what kind of a teenager would need to be fake kidnapped. Hence, the teenage math genius who cracked a terror organization's code and is fake-kidnapped by the FBI for her own protection."

"Double Digit," continues the adventures of Digit, now in her first year at MIT. Her extraordinary code-cracking ability inadvertently lands her in serious trouble with the Department of Defense. Simultaneously, she is pursued by ecoterrorist Jonas Furnis who has trailed her from Los Angeles to Cambridge, Massachusetts and attempts to capture her.

"I was interested in writing from the time I could hold a pencil," Monaghan said. 

"As I got to middle school and high school and was exposed to so much great writing, I decided it was all I wanted to do. I majored in English in college and took lots of writing classes, but when it was time to graduate I chose a path that was safer and more likely to lead me to food and shelter—investment banking. I didn't get back to writing until I was 37."

Jimin Han and Patricia Dunn, instructors at the Writing Institute, will lead the discussion following the reading and will accept questions from the audience. Han and Dunn co-taught the novel writing course that Monaghan attended at the same time she was writing her first book.

“We are a supportive community of writers of all levels and love to see our students succeed," said Dr. David Donnelly, Director of Continuing Education. "For some, success comes just through the process of putting thoughts to paper. But for others, getting published is the goal, and we are fortunate to have many published and award-winning writers come though the Writing Institute.”   

Monaghan grew up in Los Angeles where she attended Marlborough School, an all-girls high school. 

She writes a bi-weekly column for The Rye Record and is a regular contributor to The Week (an internet news site). She earned an MBA degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA degree from Duke University. She is an alumnae of the Writing Institute.

"I'd like to write one more Digit book," Monaghan said. "My second one, Double Digit, ends in sort of a cliffhanger. So I am working on that; it's mostly in my head but is slowly making it to my computer." 

Both books about Digit were published by the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. www.hmhco.com

Monaghan also co-wrote a book called Click! The Girls Guide to Knowing What You Want and Making it Happen, published by Simon and Schuster in 2007. www.simonandschuster.com   

A bookseller will be at the reading and Monaghan will be available to sign copies of her books.

The SLC Center for Continuing Education Living Room is located at 45 Wrexham Road, Bronxville, NY. 

A free parking lot is nearby. Directions to reach the campus can be found at:

 http://www.slc.edu/ce/cce/Directions_to_Campus.html

Note: An article about the novel writing course taught by Patricia Dunn and Jimin Han at Sarah Lawrence College that Annabel Monaghan attended is forthcoming. 

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