SARENA HIGBEE

My first (family) acclaimed novel, All About Me, was penned at age 7 in Mrs. Vinten-Johansen's first-grade glass. A hard word I could spell was precipitation. I also wanted to be an artist. Or a squirrel. But it was my mother who predicted early on (and with insistence) that I would become a writer.

On the other side of the ring, my more practical father blindly hoped I would become a pharmacist (an homage to which you may have noticed on my portfolio page). "But you LIKE science!" he pleaded when I declared a major in acting. "BE the amoeba!"

He wasn't (entirely) wrong. I am curious and I DO like science. But rather than run decades of experiments, I scrub those decades for the best data and details—pulling common threads to paint the heart of the story. I'm the Shark Week of branding. A writer. A Texas-bred, tutu-wearing, hula-hooping, word artist—who no longer cares to be a squirrel.