Raised in the South, the Midwest, and the Garden State, I have been from my earliest days an avid reader and storyteller. I was also the child who hung out just outside my grandmother’s kitchen listening to all the stories my grandparents and parents and whichever aunts and uncles who happened to stop by told.

Now, I live a little south of Raleigh, North Carolina, not too far from the hospital where I was born.