HANA LEE The Writing Life


When Hana Lee came to OES in Middle School, she felt alienated. At that age, she felt a lot of pressure to fi t in, and she didn’t. She was more cerebral than her peers, and she often lived in her fantasies.


As an Upper School student, Hana is still involved with fantasy—she’s a dungeon master in her own


Dungeons and Dragons group, and she has written several fantasy novels, though she says none are in a state to be read by others. She still feels diff erent from her peers, but now it’s in a good way because she doesn’t feel like she has to fi t a particular mold. “As someone who’s into those things, you


generally have to be an outlier, which is something I’ve gotten comfortable with,” she said. “If there


were more people here with the same interests as me, I’d probably get annoyed. I like being special.”


Hana is known to her classmates as a writer, and she was chosen by professional writers for an award from Echoes, the OES student literary program, which she is now


involved with as an editor of the school literary magazine. She started her writing career at a very young age. “When I was 6 or 7, I started writing longhand in composition notebooks about wolves,” she said. “T ey were talking animal stories. I was really obsessed with wolves.” She drew inspiration from reading the Harry


Potter series of novels and watching the Lord of the Rings movies. T e characters and scenarios gave her ideas that she had to put down on paper. “Whenever I see a really good movie or


read a really good book, I feel like I have to do that to make it my own,” she said. “My way of appreciating something is to borrow from it.” Hana’s favorite genre is the fantasy novel, and she abhors academic writing and nonfi ction. But during her senior year she branched out into playwriting and poetry. Her one-act play, “Binary Switch,” was chosen for full production in the winter one-acts, and she directed it herself.


Hana is looking forward to attending Stanford, where she will be able to participate in writing


workshops. Her goal for the future is to support herself with her writing and to live in a quiet house in a room with a window with a very nice view and a desk with a computer on it and nothing else.


Hana was one of three students from the state of Oregon who received perfect scores on their SAT tests.


“ If I’m into it and not distracted, I can write like a train.”


Summer 2013 21


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