Kaitlyn S.

I'm Kaitlyn, or Kate, or Katie, or occasionally Veyri or Githori. I could tell you the story behind every one of those nicknames, but I doubt anyone would be interested-- just like I could tell you the story of all of my scars, whether I remember how I got them or not. My life, or at least my literary life, began the moment my father first read me to sleep-- There's a Monster at the End of This Book and Andersen's Fairy Tales my favorites among them.

I don't know when I began crafting tales in my head, but one of my earliest memories is of gathering visiting relatives around me in my dark living room and telling horror stories-- dark and stormy nights, and bats, and a monster trekking through the woods from an abandoned cabin to crawl in through your bedroom window. I was never afraid, really, of the monster in the closet, and the only things under my bed that had the prospect to frighten were big, scary bugs in my fifty-year-old home.

I was, however, terrified of the ceiling fan. Not that it would fly off of its mount and scythe down towards me, white false-wood blades humming with homicidal intent... but of the gilded fasteners holding the blades to the fan itself. They were designed to look old-fashioned, or fit for a princess, or something like that, but all I could see were five cast-metal devils sprayed with gold gilt, waiting for me to close my eyes and tear me to bits.

I think it was fifth grade that I began channeling that vivid imagination paper, actual pages, not just drifting about in my head like ghosts... and so, roughly seven years later, here I sit, and type, and sway to the rhythm of my words. I've also been reading a bit too much Cormac McCarthy lately. On a more concrete level, I am editor in chief of both my high school's newspaper and literary magazine, I have won shiny medals for taking a ridiculously hard test on literature and writing an essay with brilliant body copy but a rather shoddy title, and I'm going to start school at the University of Texas at Austin this fall.