I have always loved words.

The family lore goes that at age three, I was intent on learning to pronounce “iridescent”; my favorite stuffed animal was a Beanie Baby dragon, white with pink-blue opal shifting wings. I was transfixed by the look of it and dubbed it my favorite color, demanding to know the label so that I could seek out more. (Iridescent is, in fact, not a color.)

My consciousness of the power of language in storytelling was pricked in Mrs. Blake’s English class, at thirteen. We were studying Langston Hughes, and I was struck by the visceral imagery in “Mother to Son.” Then I came across “The Dream Keeper,” and I was a goner. It nestled in the crooks of my brain and beneath my ribs, behind my heart, “away from the too-rough fingers of the world,” in Hughes’ own words. I was awestruck (still am, reading it back) by the phenomenon of being able to precisely capture and share emotions through written language—something largely intangible—and to hit nerves that I thought only I had.

When I was fifteen years old, I discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was not particularly focused on the narrative of “The Great Gatsby,” but rather on the language. I poured over phrases like “her voice was full of money,” “yellow cocktail music,” and “the inexhaustible variety of life.” I was too scared to write personally, but I was enchanted, and it lit something within me. I steeped myself in his work over the next five years, trying to internalize his magic and stave the itch it gave me to create something.

A decade later, I have finally given into the flame, and melt down my emotions into words and pour the words onto pages. I work primarily as a copywriter, but alongside that, write creatively about my own experiences. I have written everything from office manuals and email campaigns to social media posts and pitch deck copy. I firmly believe professional agendas can be conferred with creativity and beauty; language is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and to write is to shape it into something that serves us.

I consider myself a storyteller not in terms of narrative, but connection. I strive to create work that hits those special, deeply hidden nerves that we all think we are alone in possessing. That contact can happen regardless of form; journal entries and email campaigns have the same capacity to tie us together. Creating connections is the ultimate responsibility, and privilege, of a writer, and it is one I take great joy in.