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Jocelyn Rish

The Drama Queen Who Cried Wolf

2020 Unpublished Contest - Winner (Young Adult)

Jocelyn Rish is a writer and filmmaker who loves exploring the magic of stories in all their formats. Her short stories have been published in Highlights for Children and The Post & Courier, and she previously wrote for the MTV News website. Her debut book will be published in the fall of 2021 by Running Press Kids, an imprint of Hachette. It’s a nonfiction picture book called Battle of the Butts, about ten animals that do weird things with their butts.

Jocelyn has won awards for her short stories, screenplays, short films, and novels, including the 2013 SCBWI WIP Grant for Contemporary Novel for Young People, 2009 Highlights Fiction contest, and two different grants to turn her short stories into short films: Saying Goodbye and High Heels & Hoodoo. She and her brother also won a grant to create a feature-length horror anthology called Grave Intentions, which just secured distribution.

Jocelyn’s young adult mystery The Drama Queen Who Cried Wolf is about a sixteen-year-old with a notorious overactive imagination who discovers a body in the woods that disappears before she leads the police to it. Since no one believes her, she must access her inner Veronica Mars to prove there’s truly a killer on the loose before she becomes the next victim.

When Jocelyn’s not writing or doomscrolling social media, she tutors elementary school kids struggling to read through Reading Partners. Jocelyn lives outside of Charleston, SC, with her dogs.

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