Laurisa wrote her first story, titled “The Cat and the Dog” at the age of three on college ruled paper, illustrated it, and stapled it together.
“I am an aretist,” she wrote at the age of six in her first grade elementary school’s computer lab that combined reading and writing with keyboard typing.
“But I also like ritetyping. That’s why I like story’s. Do you like story’s?”
And she’s been writing ever since.
Born in June of 1992 in Mobile, Alabama, Laurisa Brandt never doubted her calling to be an artist and storyteller. But her artistic journey has been one of self-discovery, of growing out of realism and coloring within the lines to explore the world as seen from outside the lines. It is a path that led her into new ways of seeing the world, not only as it is, but as it could and should be.
Throughout her youth, she journaled, wrote songs, poetry, children’s books, dabbled in videography and screenwriting, entertaining her family with puppet shows, plays, and musical productions. She also tried various art mediums such as: clay, pyrography, oil painting, and taxidermy.
Singing was another favorite hobby, followed by learning to play the flute, which led to Laurisa performing two years as a second chair flutist in the Mobile Youth Symphony Orchestra. Creative hobbies were more than self-expression. They were self-discovery.
But her one constant for exploring the world was writing. By the age of nineteen, she had written three novels and self-published her fourth while working a full-time job.
In 2015, a Hollywood stunt actor hired Laurisa to write a TV pilot episode for a vision he wanted to pitch to the industry, and she soon after published a YA portal fantasy novel with anthropomorphic animal warriors similar to the beloved Redwall series by her favorite animal-fantasy author Brian Jacques.
In 2016, Laurisa married and moved to Pennsylvania, and the change and demands of a new and active social life shifted her creative focus from writing, even though her unfinished manuscripts kept whispering to her.
Then came 2020.
Social life disappeared. And a new kind of story wanted to be told. In under three weeks, Laurisa completed the seventy thousand word rough draft, originally titled “The Tourmaline Renegade,” that grew into the award winning duology known as “Birthright of Scars.” The desire to publish the “just for fun” manuscript reignited her love for reading and caused her to connect with other authors.
Laurisa enjoys cooking, quiet walks on summer days, swimming, wildlife watching, digital painting and illustration. She resides in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and their adopted Timneh African Grey parrot, Hercules.
