About Me

Bio

A lifelong storyteller, I completed the rough draft of my first novel in 2009 through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Since then, I have completed four more rough drafts through NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo, all Middle Grade or Young Adult.

In September of 2015, I received my BA in Liberal Arts from The Evergreen State College with a focus in creative writing. While at Evergreen, I worked as a peer tutor in the Writing Center and served one year on the editorial board of Inkwell The Student Guide to Writing at The Evergreen State College. In June 2015, I was promoted to Assistant to the Director at the Writing Center.

I have revised one of my NaNoWriMo novels, titled Gaudiloquence and the Frozen Story, and am currently seeking agent representation. This novel was a finalist in the Middle Grade category of the 2016 PNWA Literary Contest.

I am a member of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA). Children’s fiction has always been my favorite genre to read, and my favorite authors include Kate DiCamillo, Shannon Hale, and Catherynne M. Valente. My non-literary interests include the Muppets and all things colorful and ridiculous.

Artist’s Statement

When asked why I write for young people, I struggled to describe how utterly at home I felt while volunteering in an elementary school library. I have never stopped reading children’s fiction, and while most of what I read has fantasy elements to it, that is not where the true magic lies. Adolescents see right through the hypocritical ageism that surrounds them. When authors respect their young audience as full human beings with complex interior lives, those readers will feel the truth more intensely than adults because they have not yet built up walls against it.

I believe there is a lot of potential at the meeting place of writing and social justice. In my novels, I want to invite my young readers to examine the dynamics of power and oppression and imagine new worlds of possibilities. I want to explore how children’s/YA fiction can be a medium for anti-oppression work and how a writer with a lot of privilege can go about doing so. That being said, I never want to moralize to my audience; what matters more is telling a really good story.

In my time as a peer tutor in the Writing Center at The Evergreen State College, I learned to listen to and engage with writers, supporting them in reclaiming their own authorship and authority. I dream of one day working with young writers at this crucial stage in their lives and supporting them in their own writing.