children's books

I'm passionate about picture books because they're a distillation of everything I love about books, reading, and writing.

A picture book has to tell a compelling story in just a few hundred words, and it has to be fun to read over and over. A novel can get lazy, a short story can have dross, but a picture book? A picture book has to be bang-on all the way from start to finish--and it's written for some pretty harsh critics!

That's why I write picture books that are fun to read and fun to hear...and yes, they're edifying too. 

I've always loved words and written stories. I still have a childhood story where every animal has a unicorn horn!

My writing abilities have been honed by many teachers and courses over the years, notably:

At Princeton:

• I took a children's book course with Ulrich Knoepflmacher and received the only A+ my teacher had ever given.
• I took four creative writing courses: Two with Edmund White, one with Joyce Carol Oates, and one with Jeffrey Eugenides. 

At UC Santa Cruz:

• I was a section teacher (AKA teacher's assistant) for multiple creative writing courses under professors including Karen Yamashita and Micah Perks.