Neena Phan got her start in storytelling, oddly enough, through fashion school at Parsons The New School for Design where she learned about concept creation, character design, mood-boarding and story-boarding: all the elements a storyteller needs. It wasn’t apparent to her that she was a “real” storyteller until her last semester of senior year when she took a children’s book illustration class…and her entire world changed. She realized she’d stopped herself from becoming a writer at a young age because it was instilled in her that “writing doesn’t make money”. So to appease her parent’s wishes she tried to make it in engineering and fashion design (crazy, right?) … only to crash and burn–miserably; she was able to break through that illusion and started calling herself a real writer. She hasn’t looked back since. 

Being a (highly sensitive) half-Vietnamese, half-Cambodian, Asian-American writer, she naturally loves to write for those who don’t feel like they belong anywhere, or feel that they’re not enough of one thing. After recovering from her first psychosis attack in 2015 and struggling with mental health her entire life, she feels a deep-seated responsibility to write from the perspectives of neurodiverse characters, like herself.

Her crazy imagination lends itself to her work as she gravitates towards writing fantasy and magical realism stories mixed with heart and humor. Her goal as a storyteller is to provide a mirror for those who haven’t yet found their “home” in life, to show them it’s possible to feel like you belong somewhere, you just have to find it.

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