>>I have from the time that I've been a young person, been a writer, and been interested in the arts and how the arts intersect, and I've been interested in creativity and, and how we relate to each other.

I'm also someone who thinks a lot about the world and about what's going on and about my place in it and what I can leave behind.

My debut novel is called Tangle Root.

It's the story of a teen girl who is moving from Boston to Central Virginia, and she's not terribly happy about it.

She's not closely connected to her mom.

They don't get along, and she's moving into a house that her enslaved ancestor built.

And so in the process, she's learning about the history of this town and the history of the house that she finds herself within, and the history of this community and how that relates to her as an individual.

And so she's discovering herself, she's discovering her relationship with her mom, and she's discovering who she wants to be.

My mother will always inspire me, and I lost my mom, unfortunately in 2012, and I think about her every single day.

And I think about how I can live her vision and what I can do to, to be the daughter I was raised to be.

And I also just think about, you know, my grandparents, my, my, the people who were part of my life, and also people who I just never knew.

The resilience of them, the resilience of, of, of my ancestry to, to bring, to bring me here and to allow me to do what I do.

Honestly, it's, it's just something breathtaking when you think about that.

And my dad has shaped me.

My dad is ambitious.

He, he's not afraid of risk.

And, and I found that to be helpful in, in, in my work because if I'm not doing something that's a little scary, I don't know if I'm really pushing what books can do for us.

I think I'm always going to have some sort of role in bringing people together through books.

At least I hope so.