Going through my early childhood, I sought to escape my father and his words through fanfiction. There I found other characters who, like me, went through terrible trials. Unlike me, though, they had triumphed, and ended better off than they started. Seeing this as a young teenager gave me hope that I, too, could eventually escape from my situation.

Although I eventually moved on from fanfiction and Firefly, the experiences I had had and what it meant to me stayed with me. I had begun writing fiction in high school, with the aim of creating characters that I wished I had seen when I was younger and needed them, but still I wanted to do more, to give to younger people the representation that had been so vital to me when I was a child. The desire I felt set me onto my current career path to become an editor in the YA Literature genre, working to bring books into the world that teenagers could read and learn that they were not alone, and that they, too, could survive alongside these characters.


A/N: Genre selected shows my transition from receiving peace from representation to setting off on my path of bringing representation to others.