As a teaching artist with Detroit’s longest enduring literary non-profit—InsideOut Literary Arts Project—fiction writer and novelist Peter Markus has inspired thousands of students to become believers in the power of words, armed with nothing but an ordinary pencil—the same beat-up, unsharpened pencil Markus has carried with him, story has it, since he was in the third grade. He invites children to explore the dreamscapes of their imaginary worlds, encouraging even the most resistant students to see what magic and wonder awaits them.