A studio of writers, for the writing that matters most.

Hi, I'm Sophia. I started writing the way a lot of you probably did: quietly, a little obsessively, filling notebooks with poems and stories I wasn't sure anyone would ever read.

Then I started sharing them. In high school I founded an online literary magazine for teen writers that grew to thousands of readers around the world, and I got to edit and publish hundreds of young writers finding their voice for the first time. Somewhere in there I realized I loved the editing as much as the writing: sitting with someone else's rough draft and helping the real story underneath it come through.

My own work found its way into journals like The Adroit Journal and Polyphony Lit, earned a National Gold Medal in the Scholastic Awards and a YoungArts win, and took me to the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. But the work I'm proudest of is the two years I spent teaching a free writing workshop for kids at my local library. That's where I learned the goal was never to make someone sound impressive. It was to help them sound like themselves.

Now I'm at Harvard, and I started Verse Prep to do exactly that for students staring down the blank page of a college essay. I've been on both sides of it: the anxious writer, and the editor who has read enough to know what makes a reader lean in. I would love to help you find your story, and tell it well.