Neena Phan got her start in storytelling, oddly enough, through fashion school at Parsons The New School for Design where she learned about concept creation, character design, mood-boarding and story-boarding: all the elements a storyteller needs. It wasn’t apparent to her that she was a “real” storyteller until her last semester of senior year when she took a children’s book illustration class…and her entire world changed. She realized she’d stopped herself from becoming a writer at a young age because it was instilled in her that “writing doesn’t make money”. So to appease her parent’s wishes she tried to make it in engineering and fashion design (crazy, right?)…only to crash and burn–miserably; she was able to break through that illusion and started calling herself a real writer. She hasn’t looked back since.
Being a (highly sensitive) half-Vietnamese, half-Cambodian, Asian-American writer, she naturally loves to write for those who don’t feel like they belong anywhere, or feel that they’re not enough of one thing. After recovering from her first psychosis attack in 2015 and struggling with mental health her entire life, she feels a deep-seated responsibility to write from the perspectives of neurodiverse characters, like herself 🙂
Her crazy imagination lends itself to her work as she gravitates towards writing fantasy and magical realism stories mixed with heart and humor. Her goal as a storyteller is to provide a mirror for those who haven’t yet found their “home” in life, to show them it’s possible to feel like you belong somewhere, you just have to find it.
She is now concocting new characters, baking up batches of plots and absolutely loves doing it. Her debut picture book, THE LONELY FOX, will be published with Clarion Books.
AWARDS | RECOGNITION:
– Festigious, (The Wonder-Filled Norah Minh Lê) 2024 ~ WINNER best action screenplay
– Best Script Award – London 2024 (The Wonder-Filled Norah Minh Lê) ~ official selection
Festigious, (The Wonder-Filled Norah Minh Lê) ~ top 10 screenplays
– New York Metropolitan Screenwriting Competition and Film Awards, (The Wonder-Filled Norah Minh Lê) 2024 ~ quarter-finalist
– Wiki: The World’s Fastest Screenplay Contest, (The Wonder-Filled Norah Minh Lê), 2024 ~ semi-finalist
– Serious Writer’s Writer of the Year Award, (A World of Ideas), 2023 ~ Winner
– SCBWI Midsouth WNBA Unpublished Scholarship, (A World of Ideas), 2023 ~ Second place
– SCBWI Work-in-Progress Award, (The Wonder-Filled Norah Minh Lê), 2022 ~ Underrepresented Voices Winner
– Claymore Award, (The Wonder-Filled Norah Minh Lê), 2022 ~ Finalist
– BPL Writers-in-Residence, (The Wonder-Filled Norah Minh Lê), 2021-2022 ~ Finalist
– Carnegie’s Next Great Writer Contest, (Poetry Collection: “MY MAP”), 2021 ~ Second place
– SCBWI Midsouth Mentorship Program, 2021 ~ recipient of the E & I Scholarship Award
– SCBWI LA Conference, 2019 ~ Illustration Mentorship Award
– Brooklyn Public Library Symposium, 2019 ~ Storymakers Award
