I grew up in Big Bear, California, which is a ski resort town on top of a mountain (where there are no bears). One day when I was eight years old, I was whining to my mother that I was bored and she told me to "go write a story or something." An hour later I produced a five-page picture book entitled The Strangest Flower, chock-full of spelling mistakes and truly terrible crayon drawings of flowers floating in midair. I still have it.

I continued to write as I grew up, and I loved creating stories and plays. My brother and I even occasionally performed melodramas we'd written for our friends and family (I always played the villain, twirling my mustache with sinister glee). But despite all of that, it never occurred to me that I might grow up to be a writer. My favorite subjects in school were math and science, and I wanted to be a doctor.

I kept up my writing through high school and college, just for fun, and most of what I wrote was for children. While I was studying abroad in Italy my junior year of college, one of my professors helped me translate a children's novel I'd written. That was an invaluable project for me—not only did it improve my Italian skills immensely, but it forced me to examine, in excruciating detail, every word I'd put on paper. That up-close look at my writing made me realize two very important things: one, my novel was awful, and two, I really loved to write.

After I graduated from UCLA, I packed up my belongings and headed off to New York, where I began classes at The New School, to earn my MFA in Creative Writing for Children. After working for five years as an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers, I now write full-time from my home in Pennsylvania. In my spare time I like to explore new places, watch cheesy movies with my family, play silly board games, and bake yummy cakes.