The name’s Skylar.
I’m a writer, designer, and teacher currently based in New Jersey.
A few fun facts about me:
I am a born-and-raised Midwesterner.
Besides having an inborn understanding of all things corn, this means two things:
I have a Midwestern work ethic. I’m honest, humble, and not afraid of hands-on work. My Midwestern self-reliance helped me to both rise into management positions and start my own design business at a young age. I have strong DIY streak that manifests in me teaching myself how to do just about everything.
I am Iowa Nice. I’m polite, kind, and like many other people from my home state, excellent at de-escalating conflict. My deep sense of empathy and desire to lean into and learn from difference has helped my students find success — and themselves.
In addition to feeding farm animals, I can also shuck corn and perform simple car repairs with pop cans — quintessential Midwestern skills.
I wrote a proto-viral online novel as a teenager.
As a teenager, my sappy supernatural teen romance novel went viral on the internet — before we said things like “went viral on the internet.”
When all was said and done, I had received many gifts from a loyal online fanbase: fan art, graphic erotica fan fiction, emails about my work being plagiarized (mostly by 11-year-olds on Yahoo Answers), and even a sketchy book deal from someone in Eastern Europe.
Writing gave me the tools I needed to write my own life story. After experiencing the transformative power of writing firsthand, it’s become my mission to educate, empower, and elevate the voices missing from the larger conversation of being alive today. By mentoring and nurturing young writers, I pass on the tool kit I was given so that they too can transform their narratives and write their own futures.
My husband and I went viral in India.
As an adult, I also went viral shortly after getting married for this random interview my husband and I gave while attending an event in Orissa, India. Initially, I was asked to comment about a reading that we had just attended, but upon learning I was recently married and my husband was with me, the folks at Pratadin TV (Orissa’s largest TV network) decided to an on-the-spot human interest story that later was aired all over the state. This interview went viral on Facebook and Youtube, gaining over a million views.
