After an early career in advertising, I left the corporate world to focus on being a full time parent and, in the process, fell in love with the world of children’s literature.
I’ve been happily writing in this space ever since.
About Me:
I grew up in a big city but I love a good hike in the woods
I can tell a Sycamore apart from a Maple tree and can probably identify by sight most trees in my neighborhood
I am fluent in Russian
I have three children
One of my favorite parts of being a parent is reading with my kids
I have an identical twin sister, but no, we’ve never switched places or have ESP, though we probably could tell what the other is thinking in most situations
As a child I struggled with reading until a family friend gave me three books that changed my life and started me on a path to loving books. They were: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlotte’s Web
When I was little I used to pretend to run a library. I still love that idea
Being around books fills me with a sense of hope and possibility
My other favorite part of being a parent is being able to hang out at the children’s section of the library with my kids. It’s kind of my happy place
Books I Love:
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller
Front Desk by Kelly Yang
The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani
Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo
A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Circe by Madeline Miller
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
My Fiction:
Spaced Apart
Middle Grade Speculative, 69,000 Words
Twins Jacob and Sylvia grew up listening to their grandfather’s stories about imaginary twin planets where hills have feelings, travel happens with a tap of a map, and people live in peace on a pair of co-orbital planets. Jacob, who’s a dreamer, used to hope these places were real, even as Sylvia, who likes to question things, had her doubts. After their grandfather passes away, the stories stop and Jacob begins to worry that Sylvia was right all along: the stories were just something their grandfather had made up.
But Jacob’s adventures are only beginning. On a visit to their grandmother’s house the summer before middle school, the twins find an unusual pocket watch in their grandfather’s attic office. It launches Jacob to the twin worlds from Grandpa’s stories where he discovers the planets are not only real but need his help. The planets are headed for a collision and Jacob holds the key to stopping it. But first, he must figure out how to stand on his own, apart from his twin and everything familiar, to uncover the truth about his grandfather’s stories and the power of his connection with Sylvia, even when they are apart.