Author & Founder
Hi, I’m Genie.
I write picture books about the real stuff — new siblings, bedtime battles — and I help real people write their way through theirs.
“With a little bit of magic and a lot of love, you can always find the light.”
The Books
It started with my own kids.
Princess Lydi and the Baby Brother (2017) is named for my daughter, Lydia — the big-sister story for every kid wondering where they fit when a new baby arrives. Baby Daniel and the Bedtime Blues (2018) is named for my son, Daniel — for every parent who has ever negotiated with a toddler at 8 p.m.
In November 2014, when I was 38 weeks pregnant, a driver hit us and kept driving. I got my three-year-old daughter to safety. My son arrived early — and he made it. We all made it. That’s when I understood what my stories were really about: even on the hardest nights, with a little bit of magic and a lot of love, you can always find the light.
The Workshops
Then the workshops started.
In 2018, back in Racine, Wisconsin, I started Your Story. Your Voice. — weekly story-writing workshops for young people, built around positive decision-making. You don’t need to be a writer. You just need to be ready.
Four community anthologies have come out of those workshops: Be the Hero (2018, with John Bryant Community Center), Super HUMANS (2019, with Emaus Lutheran Church), and This Isn’t Easy — our first adult workshop, held virtually when Covid turned everything sideways, with Hope Council on Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse in Kenosha.
In 2019 I took Find the Light Books through the WWBIC Growth Accelerator and placed third at Demo Day. I’ve been building ever since — now from Charlotte, North Carolina, where the bulk book program puts these stories into the hands of the families who need them.
The Mission
A social enterprise, not just a bookstore.
Find the Light Books exists to build up the community through story writing and book publication — improving the emotional well-being of individuals and communities through compassionate conversation and self-reflection. Every bulk order and every sponsored book keeps that going.