“I wrote the first chapter of When a Soul Walks for a short story assignment in my junior year of college. The pandemic shut down my study abroad plans a week before school began so I was scrambling to find housing and classes. My beautiful friend, Jane Nolan, seeing my struggles, saved me by sharing their schedule. I essentially made it my own and registered for a bunch of fiction writing courses, which terrified me because at the time I thought I was a poet. But boy was I wrong! When a Soul Walks was born out of canceled travel plans, leaps of faith into genres I didn’t think I could write, and sitting alone between my four dorm room walls overlooking a city full of masked faces and discarded hand sanitizer bottles. My only inspiration was a few city lights and the occasional sunset. 

I was stuck inside a school dropped in the heart of Boston, a city that practically shut down. So I sat at my little wooden desk, and I wrote about what I hoped life was like for my grandpa after he passed away in 2011. That’s when the first chapter “Light Bulbs” came to life. It stemmed from a worry I’ve held onto since I was eleven years old. The fear that my grandpa wouldn’t be able to watch me grow up. He was my best friend and one of the reasons why I fell in love with writing. For my entire life, he was battling cancer. When things got bad, I would write him poems to try to cheer him up. I believe positivity has healing properties. When I couldn’t go into his hospital room because his white blood cell count was too low, I’d pass a poem to a nearby nurse, who’d hang it up on the wall for me. Just like Suzy did for Edward.

A personal story about where I hoped my grandpa ended up after he died turned out to be one of the most chaotic things I’ve ever written. Yet this is the first time I can truly say I am proud of my writing. I devoted the past year of my life, my senior year of college, to perfecting this work of fiction. Half the time, I had no idea where the plot was going, but I kept pushing through because of you and your constant love and support. This book means so much to me, and I hope it meant something to you too. Even if one single line resonated! All I’ve ever wanted was to use my passion for writing to help others in any way I can. It’s a promise I made to myself in the fourth grade, one that has driven my career as a writer and continues to push me to this day.”

When a Soul Walks Acknowledgements