I write for children and young adults and have a passion for helping others shape and hone their stories.
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Represented by Carter Hasegawa of T2 Arts & Literary
2025 Winner: Best Manuscript Award (YA/MG) Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustators, San Francisco/South:Where The Fire Gods Roar
2025 Winner: Best Manuscript Award (YA/MG) Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustators, San Francisco/South:Where The Fire Gods Roar
From the British Isles to California...
I grew up in the wet and windy British Isles, where I was raised on a steady diet of fish & chips, Shakespeare, and Arthurian legends. Now a Californian, I’m obsessed with truly wild things like hallucinogenic lichen, deep-water caverns, and migratory birds. My writing is inspired by ancient myths, natural settings, and human dilemmas of all kinds. I love building vivid new worlds and creating stories driven by the conflicting desires of characters who must unearth their own pasts in order to solve the plot.
I earned my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I received the Norma Fox Mazer Scholarship for YA Fiction, the Critical Thesis Scholarship, and the “In a Nutshell” Short Story Award, as well as an Honorable Mention in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Prize for Fiction. I’m also a member of SCBWI (and a 2025 Best Manuscript regional awardee), an alumna of the Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Workshop, and a former finalist in the National YA Novel Discovery Contest. My short story “A Game of Inches” appeared in “Masked/Unmasked,” Hunger Mountain Vol. 21, (2017).
Affiliations & Awards
Coaching & More
I stay connected to teens through my work as a college access coach and as a volunteer and board member at the writing nonprofit 826 Valencia (www.826valencia.org). As a freelance writer, consultant, and communications director, I’ve written and edited many articles, op-eds, and publications. I love running workshops and working one-on-one with students of all ages on their writing. For more information about coaching services, including manuscript review, college essay support, and specialized workshops, contact me at rachelyeamanauthor@gmail.com)
Some books that inspire me.
