It might seem like I haven’t quite found my “writer niche.” Maybe that’s true. A poetry collection followed up by a soft-sci-fi novel with big plans for a trilogy…how does that happen? 

It started in the arts & crafts station in kindergarten. I got in trouble for going there too many times after recess. But I had a story to tell. I was compelled to write it down in bright yellow marker and read it to the class. 

The urge to storytell is what makes us human. God’s creation, creating. 

Sometimes, it’s a song on a ukulele. Other times, it’s a vase interpreted by the chunks of colors and negative space it’s made up of. Many times—a full book worth of times—it’s micro moments crafted into verses. 

I graduated from Lehigh University in 2018 with a degree in marketing and finance and a minor in creative writing. I remember picking Marketing because a woman in the admissions office explained how you could balance a business (“practical”) career with creativity. I went into the creative writing track assuming I would write short stories and work my way up to a novel. I considered creative nonfiction to better supplement my business classes. But when no other class was available one semester, I landed in an intro to poetry class that changed everything. 

I had just learned about flash fiction the semester before. Poetry seemed similar—with its own set of rules to break, of course. I once wrote a 100-word modern fairy tale for that flash fiction class, then later evolved that story into a poem. To me, poetry is capturing or suggesting an entire life in a single moment. It leaves me breathless and aching for more.