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BY ROZELLA HARDIN
Editorial Director
rozella.hardin@elizabethton.com
Ann Machen Pritchard, a former Elizabethton resident, who now resides in Minneapolis, Minn., has found success as an author, illustrator, and songwriter of the children’s books, Phil the Pill and Friends Making Positive Choices, and Val’s World Featuring the Family Unity Roundtable. She is also the writer of the song “Drugs and Alcohol” by MAMP Creations.
Pritchard said she wrote her books to help encourage children to stay in school and get an education as well as to learn how to read and make positive choices. “They also teach children positive communication skills and help bring families closer together,” she shared.
Her newest book “The Spirit of Sixteen” is based on a true story.
Pritchard’s passion and mission is to encourage everyone that it is not the end of the world when things don’t go our way. She strongly believes that if we get a good education and learn to make positive choices at an early age, we can get through more difficult challenges now and later in life.
Her books, which were nominated in the MN Book Awards and Hollywood Book Awards, have been received positively by many, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Laura Bush, and Sara Ferguson, Duchess of York.
Pritchard is from a family of 16 children. Her parents were Rev. D.M. and Ola Mae Machen, and they had a gospel singing group “The Machen Spirituals,” who sang on radio and TV in her childhood days. She was formerly a local model, actress, singer and make-up artist.
Machen is proud to be the sister of five military veterans.
She has appeared in productions at the Des Moines Playhouse in Des Moines, Iowa; in the outdoor dramas “The Wataugans,” now known as “Liberty,” and in the “The Lost State: A Frontier Chronicle.”
Pritchard has also been featured in commercials for Tennessee Tourism, was in the Minneapolis the Movie test trailer, and played the role of Grandma in “The Christmas You Don’t Know,” directed by Amber Patton and Christine Clayburg, award-winning directors. She plays the role of Lile in “The Grapes of Wrath” and is the line producer for “Enigma Lake.” Machen also had roles in “Body Not Included,” “Safe At Home,” and was an extra in “Bitcoin.”
Pritchard has appeared on several radio and television shows including Fox 9 Morning News, the Art Cunningham Show, Lovepower, Crossroads, Let’s Learn to Get Along, Motivation with Ron Anderson and several radio shows including Elizabethton’s own WBEJ. She has also been the object of several newspaper and magazine articles.
Pritchard is available to speak at schools, libraries, for radio and TV shows and other events involving the community for positive interventions.
Pritchard is the owner of an online retail store, MAMP Creations, that sells merchandise with positive messages to help change the world. Her business is listed in the Gift-Promotional Items section of the Super Bowl LII Business Connect Program Resource Guide.
Machen has also been a community and organization volunteer in the past.