Gabrielle Ghatt
Author – Playwright
When I was 8 years old, my mom saw that my brother and I loved to make up skits with My Little Pony collection. She also noticed that we were always looking at YouTube channels and binge watching digital web series. She told us we should be creators of content not just consumers.
So in the summer before third grade, at 8 years old, I decided to actually take her up on that challenge and I wrote a script for a blog series. I planned the voice-over and did the production and set design. My brother,11 at the time, was my director, script editor and co-star. It was my first taste of playwriting and I loved it.
There was a foundation for that love. I attended a Catholic school that taught Classical education, focused on the civilization of man, grammar, literature and logos. I studied Latin from 1st thru 8th grade, and both my immigrant parents are writers. (My Trini Dad is penning his own great novel). My mom, born in Sierra Leone, was a journalist.
In the 5th grade, I shared another play I had written with my teacher who agreed to let me cast it and put on the production for the entire school!
By the time, I finished middle school, I had graduated to developing a love and fascination with musical theater and dystopian novels. I breezed through the Percy Jackson series, and watched and listened to the soundtrack to every modern and historical play that caught my attention.
During this period of discovery, I penned a few short stories that I never finished. In 2020, ten months into the pandemic, in the 7th grade, I started writing a fantasy mythology series which I later decided to call “Gods”.
I picked it back up at the start of the 9th grade . It is currently an ongoing series I am writing which currently has 16 short chapters. I also started attending writing camps and workshops and joined the writing and Improv clubs in school (I’m in the 10th grade as of this writing) to be around fellow thespians and creatives. I have been on the tech crew for my high school theater company since 9th grade. I was recently cast as lead, “Mindy” in one of the act’s of another schools’ production of “Testing, Testing” by Alan Haehnel.
I am also penning an untitled sci fi mystery novel which occupies my time in between high school classes. I probably am taking after my dad who is working on his first novel and has been writing short stories for many years. When I was a kid, sometimes at night, he would read his stories to me and my brothers because he wanted to encourage us to books, and he also hoped his books would spark our own creative works.
I am a decent soccer player too and play for a young club team and live in Maryland with my mom who owns a creative agency, my dad who is a lawyer at a medical school and my brothers, one a freshman in college and the other a third year college student .
Last Edited December 2022