In 1912, at 2:20 AM on April 15, the RMS Titanic sank in the waters off the coast of Nova Scotia.  Exactly seventy-five years later, Hayley Anne Perkins was born in the suburbs of Chicago.  She shares her birthday with Leonardo da Vinci, Catherine I, and Emma Thompson; however, this is usually overshadowed by the fact that it’s Tax Day and no one really feels like celebrating.  Fortunately, her notorious birthday gifted Hayley with a lifelong interest in history, destiny, and famous figures (although not taxes).

By the time she was a year old, Hayley could recite the alphabet and took a lot of joy in having surprisingly intricate conversations with strangers at the grocery store, which invariably included their expression of surprise that she knew so many words. 

From then on, she felt that words were her key to all things interesting or chocolaty in life, and set out to learn as much as possible about them and to harness their power.  At age three, she hijacked her mother’s typewriter and commenced writing a series of short stories – most notably, “Jesse Bear Goes to the Zoo to See Eliwonks and Mawonkinks.”

Over the course of her pre-collegiate schooling, Hayley Anne Perkins spent the majority of her classtime writing stories in Lisa Frank notebooks instead of paying attention in math class, and consequently cannot do long division at all.  However, she was honored with having two individual stories chosen for inclusion in the Carl Sandburg Young Authors’ Anthologies before going on to high school.  In the seventh grade, she also wrote a 120-page novel entitled A Bag of Marbles ; fortunately, her query letter was nicely rejected and she doesn’t have to deal with the mortification that its public existence would surely cause.

In high school, Hayley spent an equal amount of time performing with the Drama Club and writing fanfiction, which won many awards.  Her Junior year, a character who had lived since the beginning of time wandered into her head and asked to have a story written about her, but no attempts were successful.  The stubborn character held fast, but instead, over the course of her senior year, she wrote an original stage play that she then directed, acted in, and used to get a prestigious Creative Writing scholarship to Knox College. 

Knox provided a plethora of new ways to explore the phenomena of words, and she graduated in just under three years and majored in 20th Century History with minors in both Creative Writing and Journalism.

As a college student, Hayley had the honor of working as an intern on Ken Burns’ WWII documentary The War, where she helped to collect and transcribe fascinating interviews with veterans from all theaters of combat, including a former Nazi soldier now living in a Midwestern nursing home.  She also wrote a bi-weekly column for her college newspaper for one year of her scholastic tenure before jetting off to New York City .

In New York, Hayley (under another name) published articles and narratives for The Hollywood Reporter, Pop Matters, The One Love, and entertainment collective Tommy2.net.  In writing for The Hollywood Reporter, she had the opportunity to interview both Elmo – the Sesame Street muppet – and Mayor Bloomberg simultaneously, and counts this as one of the most bizarre experiences of her life. 

Most importantly, it was during her time in New York City that Hayley managed to complete the initial drafts of her stubborn character’s tale: Green, which is the first in her forthcoming quartet of contemporary paranormal YA novels.  She is in the early stages of publication for the series, but early readers have compared her writing style to  J.K. Rowling, Jane Austen, S.E. Hinton, and Meg Cabot, with “beautifully lush imagery,” “an amazingly original storyline,” and “hilarious witty humor.” 

Between spirited conversations with her Focus Group and writing stories deeper and deeper inside the universe of Green , Hayley enjoys watching cancelled sitcoms on the internet, reading as many YA novels and historical texts she can get her hands on, and perpetually searching for the perfect General Tso’s chicken.