Meet Haley ♡ Introducing New Members

hey everyone! i’m haley, a sixteen year old slytherin from canada. my hobbies include overusing exclamation marks, emojis, and being generally cringy. and reading, obviously. since everyone knows “what is your favorite book?” is the age-old impossible question, i’ll show you a list of a few of my fictional crushes instead (as written on a sticky note by the eighth-grade version haley):

• radar — paper towns, john green (nerd i love him)
• adrian ivashkov — bloodlines, richelle mead (mY bAbY)
• connor stoll — percy jackson and the olympians, rick riordan (i used to read a lot of tratie fan fictions in like, fourth grade)
• kaz brekker — six of crows, leigh bardugo (we all love our men a little psycho)
• carswell thorne — the lunar chronicles, marissa meyer (MAJOR CUTIE)
• étienne st. clair — anna and the french kiss, stephanie perkins (french n adorable)
• peter kavinsky — to all the boys i’ve loved before, jenny han (so so pure i love you peter k)
• william herondale — the infernal devices, cassandra clare (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

there’s definitely a lot a lot a lot more but that’s all i can remember for now. most of the writers i mentioned above are my teen fic favorites, with the addition of sarah mlynowski, sarah dessen, kelley armstrong, and lauren oliver. i’m willing to read all sorts of young adult fiction but i’d say i’m more inclined towards contemporaries / realistic fiction. some of my all-time fave books outside of the ya genre include the bell jar (sylvia plath), the girls (emma cline), and the joy luck club (amy tan).

(side note — i’m definitely the weird/stalker type of fangirl. case in point: when i met jenny han last month, i b̶e̶g̶g̶e̶d̶ asked her to call me her daughter in her autograph. long story short, i usually refer to jenny han as my mom because she’s asian and i’m asian & she’s a writer and i want to be a writer. being the amazingly kind person she is, she agreed.)

aside from reading, i also looooove writing. i’m the co editor-in-chief of my school’s literary magazine and read for other online publications, like glass kite anthology and the icarus anthology. this summer, i’m planning to finish editing my scrappy manuscript i wrote last year and attending the iowa young writers program (!!! highkey excitement and nerves). i’m not exactly sure how i got into it but like reading, writing has just always been a hobby of mine.

so far, i’m not really sure how writing fits into my life goals. for a while, i thought i wanted to go into sciences because i was pretty good at math + science but nahh i came to the light and realized the humanities are awesome(r). i’m hoping to major in political science when i go to post-secondary, with concentrations in international relations and language courses, so that i can eventually go to law school and become an international lawyer. i really love learning languages and am currently fluent in english (duh), french, cantonese, and mandarin and am studying spanish and german. if anyone has tips/advice/wants to chat about/in these languages, feel free!

other random tidbits about me! i love all sorts of music, like classical (romance period), indie/alternative (san cisco, mitski, lorde), movie/musical soundtracks and pop, too. the most tragic event of my 2017 was the closing of club penguin. i have a kitten named avignon who can speak french and a cat named bolobao who can speak cantonese. i love my friends even more than i love grocery shopping at walmart and some people i will appreciate forever are lin-manuel miranda, constance wu, and brendon urie. my life is like one never-ending rom com, except it’s only full of the embarrassing mishaps (that are only funny in the painful way) and none of the cheesy romance.

all in all, i hope you guys have a better sense on what type of person i am now (a Mess™) after this quick crash course. the only social media i have on public is my twitter (@haleyium) although i don’t usually post there (someone pls teach me how to use twitter?!). anyways, i’m super excited to be a new co-blogger here at twirling pages and can’t wait to get started!

with love,

haley