Kristen is a USA Today Bestselling Author, a teacher, and a book coach. She has lived coast to coast, but with her extended family in north Alabama, her roots run southern deep. She teaches high school and writes in local coffee shops near her home outside of Houston.

Growing up, Kristen lived in Virginia, Alabama, California, Oregon, and Texas. She wrote plays and short stories for anyone who would read them and eventually graduated college with a double major in Music and Journalism. A few years later, she earned a Masters in Literature and for her creative thesis wrote her first full-length novel, which she happily keeps unpublished.

As a teacher, she enjoys finding creative pairings of the classic canon and modern texts, and she promotes choice reading in her classroom. She also likes to tell other writers, including her students over the past fifteen years, the importance of extensive revisions as well as the necessity of grit—in the writing process and in everyday life.

Kristen’s husband is a pastor, and together they are raising three amazing teens and a rescue lab mix.

Thanks to Bess Garison for photography.