Stories that grow
with you.

Let's talk about my arrival to storytelling the long way, which is honestly the only way I'd recommend. I was the kid in school whose "free write" journal kept filling up until I had a collection of composition notebooks piled in the closet of my childhood bedroom. I was also the kid who took the essay assignment over the project or class presentation every single chance I got. I've always been a journal kid, and then a poet. Eventually, the stories I wanted to tell got too big for stanzas, and I wrote my first of many unrefined manuscripts in high school.

Eventually college came around and I was introduced to the world of writing conferences. I found myself at the SCBWI New York Conference year after year, workshopping realistic fiction for young readers, learning what it means to write a childhood that feels true rather than tidy. I learned from many authors there — that there's no such thing as too racy or inappropriate in YA fiction from Elana K. Arnold, and about the beauty of rhythm from Elizabeth Acevedo during her workshop on writing the novel in verse. There were so many amazing takeaways that I still carry with me today, no matter what genre I'm writing in.

Somewhere along the way, a screenplay grabbed me by the collar and wouldn't let go. I've always had a love for movies and television, but something clicked for me and I knew I had to dig deeper into the craft. So I studied screenwriting as an undergraduate and went even deeper into it in grad school during the pandemic. I watched old movies and analyzed the scripts alongside them and read books like Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman and What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg. The pen got moving and the stories kept coming: sitcoms, dramas, fiction manuscripts, short stories, and many that sat with editors long enough to mean something. Maybe living in that space with my fiction manuscripts is what's kept me on this pivot with my screenwriting journey. Why not bring the scripts along for the ride of uncertainty when it comes to publication and on-screen adaptations? The worst they can say is "not yet!"

I write realistic fiction about the topics people don't like to talk about. It's heavy at times, but it's a reality no one should shy away from because of discomfort. I write scripts that encompass the kind of stories and specific faces I needed to see when I was growing up. That, it turns out, is a perfectly good reason to keep writing them.