Tommy Haight is an aspiring author from Tucson, AZ.

But was born somewhere in California’s San Fernando Valley to parents who had always styled home with books either crammed on the shelf or lying marked (never dog-eared!) beside a chair. Precocious until he was too old for that word to be endearing, Tommy had always had a love of story whether it was via the written word or 90’s/00’s television (which the parents bravely limited in the face of much whingeing).

Tommy was in the 3rd grade when he concocted his first story. It was dictated to his father whose head was swung back like he’d fallen asleep at the computer, eyes closed, but still miraculously transcribing his rambling son’s account of a gulper eel doing… something, surely, shortly after the boy had learned what one of those things was. (They are pretty cool.) It was Tommy’s intention to bring it into the classroom to read in front of the other kids, which he did, and it’s one of his earliest shames that he told the teacher he’d typed it himself.

Tommy had had several very influential friends and instructors during the formative years of high school and college who tapped his love for poetry and, oddly enough, essays. He soon stepped into an Economics program much like the comic relief of an Egyptian adventure steps into quicksand. And like Brendan Fraser from the 1999 classic The Mummy reaching down to extricate him with burly but tender arms, dewy from the desert heat, Tommy transitioned without much hassle into the English department instead. To this day, he finds writing creative non-fiction more natural but less rewarding than fiction.

You can find him playing kickball in a dress, standing in the rain, sleeping when he shouldn’t be, or cringing at memories of himself.