Hadassah Waugh was born and raised in Middle-Earth, New Zealand. She grew up in a homeschooled family with four siblings, each of whom influenced her love of stories in different ways, through the written, visual, console, and audible stories they loved.
Raised like this on many fandoms like Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Super Paper Mario, Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda series, not to mention all the stories she made up for her younger sister, Hadassah’s love of tales and storytelling naturally shifted into seriously writing books when she was around 11.
While her first attempts were cheesy fanfics from her favourite video game, she sought to improve her skill, eventually beginning an original series when she was around 15 after becoming frustrated by the fact there were no new epic stories suitable younger teens.
A former attendee of The Jerry Jenkins Writer’s Guild and the Your Novel Blueprint course, Hadassah is currently refining her writing skill by being a full-time student at The Author Conservatory, an online collage alternative for young writers where she is learning wisdom from professionals like Kara Swanson, Brett Harris, and Steve Laube. In this conservatory students do writing craft and also business training, so as to skilled full-time authors while still paying bills.
Community is also a huge focus, and Hadassah loves making and maintaining many amazing friendships through Author Conservatory, as well as interacting and chatting frequently in the bookstagram community. She is also looking forward to attending writers’ conferences in America to meet online friends in-person — sign up to her newsletter if you want to stay up to date on what conferences she will be attending 🙂
Hadassah’s heart dream is to create epic stories clean enough for younger and older readers alike to enjoy, in which even though the characters may not be perfect, and may sometimes struggle and fail, there is always hope, light and love shining out and comforting them.
She writes these stories from her favourite nooks on the couch in her home in New Zealand, and would love to meet and become friends with you!
If you’re interested in getting to know Hadassah, please sign up to her newsletter and tell her what your favourite ever story or fandom is, and why — she’s a huge nerd and looks forward to geeking out with you there!