BIO

Welcome to the homepage for Ali Rae, LA-based author and creative.

Sometimes a poet, more often a worldbuilder – but mostly an avid reader, serial movie-watcher, and obsessive storyteller – I am creative to the core.

My journey to becoming a vocational writer started as a young teen, compulsively reading fantasy novels by Shannon Hale, Gale Carson Levine, and Rick Riordan. As I grew up, my love for fantastic worlds became the gateway for reading books like Ender’s Game, The Hunger Games series, and The Mortal Instruments series, which created a passionate love for science fiction that still beats on to this day. After reading City of Bones, Cassandra Clare’s first novel from The Mortal Instruments, I remember saying to myself: “If she can do this, I can do it too.” I will never forget the wonder I felt when I so quickly fell in love with Cassandra’s fictional characters and the story world she had crafted… so when I walked into my first writing class as a college freshman and discovered the exquisite Joan Didion, my childhood fascination with milieu stories synced with my new love for the craft of writing – the arts of grammar and syntax that, before that class, I didn’t know were art forms at all.

With the support and instruction from my favorite professor and creative mentor, I spent the next three years pouring my interest in storytelling into average memoirs, decent short stories, and one exceptionally horrific feature screenplay. There came a point when I started considering other forms of writing than the novels I was so desperate to write, even considering other creative outlets. And I think it was when I took a class called Women Writers as a senior – and actually started reading a lot again, which had slowed down an embarrassing amount since high school – that my spark was lit and The Past is a Place in California was born.

My portfolio includes the fiction novel, The Past is a Place in California; a student short film, The Lunch Rush; a poetry collection; and various essays and articles available on my new blog Insomnia Paratus and my profile on Vocal. 

I’m always around to converse and answer questions through my Contact Page or any of my social media accounts. Thanks for reading the beginning of my story, more to come…

-A