At just ten years old, sophomore Kaiana Anderson was gifted a sketchbook from her grandmother that was the key to unlocking her creative writing side.

“I definitely want to write books…It’s my favorite thing ever,” Kaiana expressed. She wants to go to the University of Arizona, and she wants to be an author.

Kaiana enjoys many forms of writing including, but not limited to, essays, poems, and of course, books! She tries to write at least one chapter a month, and writes mostly at night, or when she’s supposed to be doing something else. Sometimes, she has to tell herself to stop writing so she can do her homework, but she tries to get her homework done first. She mainly writes modern fantasy and is in the process of writing a book, well her second book actually. She finished the first book in her series last year and is currently working on her second one. She knows how the story will end, but she isn’t sure of the details in between, so she doesn’t yet know how many books it will be, but she knows her characters will be adults by the end.

Writing is an escape for her, and when building stories, she usually starts with creating the character, her favorite part, and then builds around it from there. She does very little research and likes fantasy because,”…if it’s not true, you can just say ‘well it is in my book.'” She gets emotionally attached to her characters and has a hard time deciding what will happen to them. She once cried after killing off a character.

She’s been writing her book since she got the sketchbook (5 years).  The plot is about a team of superheroes, centered around the main character Molly. Her grandma helped create the main pet, a poodle dragon (how cool!), and the narrator’s best friend, Azure, who is Kaiana’s favorite character. She doesn’t like to base her characters off of people she knows because she wants to avoid hurting their feelings, but with 3 brothers, one older and two younger, she gets inspiration for the annoying little brother character from them.

Kaiana’s Grandmother is her biggest inspiration when it comes to writing. “Honestly, I think it was my grandma. She gave me a sketchbook, and I had some ideas floating around in my head, and she encouraged me to write them down,” Kaiana said when asked how she got into writing. She takes a lot of inspiration from her grandma because she was also a writer.

In February of 2022, her grandmother passed away, and Kaiana found it,”…really hard to write, it was just kind of hard to function, but I’ve finally been able to get back into writing, and it’s been really special and nice because I know that it’s from her. I got my love of writing from reading her work and her encouraging me, and it’s just really special.” Kaiana plans to dedicate her first book to her grandma.

When Kaiana isn’t in her storyland, she participates in choir at Sahuaro, and community theater at Valley of the Moon, here in Tucson. She gets her passion for singing from her mom and is in the honors choir. She plans to try out for regionals and solo ensemble. She enjoys choir because she loves,”…. singing with a group of people. It’s like that sense of community, and it’s also less scary because if you make a mistake, you have all those other people to support you.” As for theater, she enjoys it, and would like to write a play, but doesn’t want to go into acting or playwriting professionally.

Kaiana is a bright student with a story to tell!