"Smoke and Mirrors" wins the State Literary Award in 2020

I don’t think I can overstate just how lucky I was to win this. Just the ability to publish a novel idea you first formulated at age twelve is miraculous. The fact some grand and Very Important People thought it was good to hand an award to? Almost inconceivable.

It wasn’t something that really came into perspective for me until I was actually on stage and receiving the award. But I had been competing with adults. The other nominees were fully fledged authors in their own right, writing their own stories for a teenage audience. Even now, I still look back and think the whole thing was kind of insane. I remember the entire evening as a blur.

Deep down, part of me still wonders if I deserve this stupid of hunk metal at all. Still, I managed to get a second time a few years later. That has to count for something.