As an author…
I grew up on a steady diet of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, and all sorts of animated shows on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, 4Kids Entertainment, and Kids’ WB. Some of my favorite anime—subbed or dubbed—include Sailor Moon, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Rurouni Kenshin, YuYu Hakusho, and Ouran High School Host Club. In terms of cartoons, Dexter’s Laboratory, Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Fairly OddParents, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Avatar: The Last Airbender are top contenders.
As you can probably tell, I watched a lot more television than read a whole lot of books, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just meant that my storytelling sensibilities would come from a different lens and that it would later be informed by what I’d read in high school, college, and graduate school. Once Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing opened up those writing doors for me, writers like Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, Dr. Nnedi Okorafor, and Linda Addison happily stepped in to re-educate me about my actual literary history and storytelling heritage.
Writers of the Future Online Workshop Student (February 2024—present)
Member of the Codex Writers Group (December 2023—present)
Associate of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (October 2023—present)
MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from UC Riverside Palm Desert (June 2024)
Self-published The Art of Capturing Phantoms: Definitive Edition (September 2022)
BA in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis in Fiction from UC Irvine (December 2015)
As a Book Coach…
I’ve been editing written media for most of my life, finding pesky typos in academic essays or even the books I consume. Above all, I am empathetic, eagle-eyed, encouraging, and excited about the stories I get to help shape. But when it comes to helping a writer tell their story, it’s not my vision or my skill that ultimately matters. Whether it’s a student learning the intricacies of the English language or an author hoping to finally get their big break, I strive to help everyone get to the next level of wherever it is they want to be.
Following in Nisi Shawl’s footsteps, I hope to one day edit and publish speculative fiction from BIPOC and QUILTBAG+ writers like myself, whose unique points of intersectionality in their lives allow for conversations in literature that are normally silenced.
Impact Fellowship Recipient of Author Accelerator (February 2024—present)
Copyeditor and Developmental Editor for Tessera Editorial (January 2024—present)
LGBTQ+ Editors Association Mentor, Mentee, and Member (December 2023—present)
Editorial Sensitivity Reader for Salt & Sage Books (May 2023—present)
Sourcebooks BIPOC Editorial Program Trainee (September 2023—November 2023)
Voice to Books Editor for The Coachella Review (December 2022—December 2023)
Assistant Language Teacher in Gifu, Japan (April 2019—March 2022)
Online English and Writing Tutor for Chegg, Inc. (April 2017—November 2017)
As an entrepreneur…
I am one of the busiest hustlers I know. I need to remind myself of that often. No matter how much money I make or don’t make in a certain day, I work hard and love learning new things. I’m a classic jack of all trades who will have a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction that declares me a master of at least one thing, but it’s all in the service of telling stories and helping others do the same.
Earning commissions from sales of Scrivener software (February 2023—present)
Designing and selling merch with Printify (January 2023—present)
Earning commissions as an affiliate of Bookshop.org (January 2023—present)
Facilitating professional TTRPG game sessions through StartPlaying (October 2022—present)
Reading people’s tarot cards as a Certified Tarot Reader (July 2021—present)
Running Captured Phantoms through Ko-fi and Twitch (May 2019—present)
Selling cookies as a Girl Scout* to family and friends (1999—2008)
*As a child, I identified as a girl. Presently, I do not.