About the Author

From the moment I was able to hold a pencil, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I was made to create. 

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I grew up in the Ohio River Valley—the coal-dusted foothills of the Appalachian mountains. As a child, I was always drawn to creation. I drew, I sang, and most importantly, I wrote. Whenever I had the chance, I found myself picking up new notebooks, squirrelling away into secluded spaces where I could press my back to a wall, draw my knees to my chest, and write out all the fantastical stories I could fathom. Needless to say, this made me a strange kid. 

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Playgrounds were often treated as reading nooks, libraries often transformed into sanctuaries, and the forests outside of my father's home became a haven. If I could indulge in fiction, I would. I was lucky to have a mother who supported my fantastical ramblings and a father who was just as prone to it himself. Never once was my creativity stifled as I scratched down notebook upon notebook worth of worlds that existed in the paracosm of my tiny ten-year-old mind. 

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Though, as life often does, it came with the force of a dying star to put out the little light I'd fostered for so long. 

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It was easy for teachers to support a creative child, but much harder for them to support a creative young adult. I was expected to grow up, to grow out of this fantasy land where I would one day write and share my work with the world. And like any stone, I eventually gave way to the crashing of the tides and sat my dreams aside. 

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As it turns out, majoring in evolutionary biology wasn't my best move. (Who would have guessed?) 

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After years of trial and error, years of fighting my own innate drive to write, to create, to imagine, I found the spark I needed to try again.

 

That spark? Spite. 

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I had been told by teachers, counselors, and professors alike that writing wasn't a viable career. My work was praised, my art was applauded by these same people who told me that it simply "wasn't an option". With the wind of doubt beneath my defiant wings, I found myself determined to prove them wrong. I simply refused to take the safe road, make the safe choice. How was I to know the limit, to know what I was capable of, if I didn't try? So, like any good Icarus, I strapped my wings on and took the leap. 

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I hope through my work to show at least one other person, one more teenager covertly scratching down poetry and story ideas on a napkin at dinner, one more child reading alone on the playground, that it is possible. Be as big as you want, fly as high as you want, and don't you dare fear the sun.  

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Be better. Be more. 

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"I write only because there is a voice in me that will not be stilled." 

-Sylvia Plath