Alpha first learned to walk when she was two, but in return she could say compromise and magenta. That’s not exactly how you make friends in kindergarten, but perhaps it is how you start to form a connection to language. Neither magenta nor compromises (not that she’s not willing to make them) do play a significant role in her writing today, however. Here it’s more of a slimy green, burnt orange and a determination to get a story to a place where it, and those around it, can face themselves and feel whole and heard.

She has a sort of embarrassing catchphrase she likes to use: That there is a big difference between being realistic and believable. Realism she’s pretty sick of, but believability however, she’s willing to fight for. That might be because of her own complicated relationship with reality, which stems from equal parts daydreaming and diagnosis, but which has ended up being the foundation for her work as a screenwriter today… That, and also the online text-based Harry Potter RPG she spent all her childhood and adolescence on.