For many people, life is viewed merely as a time frame a person is afforded to enjoy life and the many ups and downs it brings. For Houston native Brandalyn Gill, life is a work in progress, as she strives to push, LIFE, a book she published at age 16.
The 18-year-old self-published author’s opportunity to publish the book came seven years after she began producing it’s content; a 305-paged collection of intellectual and artistic poems and short stories written by Gill from the tender age of nine into her adolescence at age 15. After finishing fifth grade in North Houston’s Pleasantville Elementary, she began being home-schooled by Pensacola Christian Academy’s online and instructional video series, A Becka Academy, using her free time to participate in her hobby turned business venture. The book was published by Illumination Literary Publishing Company, a company founded by Gill.
She was recently enrolled in her junior year at the University of Houston’s Cyvia and Melvyn Wolfe Center for Entrepreneurship, a program that has earned a top spot in the Princeton Review and has been featured in both the Princeton Review and Entrepreneurship Magazine’s top 25 lists of undergraduate entrepreneurship programs in the U.S. since 2007.
Gill said, “Me writing this book at such an early age is big. There’s a stereotype about my generation that we don’t know anything because we haven’t been through anything. I’m trying to veer my generation from a lot of the ‘trash’ we’ve been taught.”
Through works like “Dreamer,” Rain Rain Go Away,” and “I’m Only a Man,” which are her personal favorites, Gill expresses her flare for poetry and literature. She notes that her poems were written with the intention of inspiration. She offers poetic insight from an array of perspectives in poems like “To Be a Woman,” “Breath,” and “Intent to Live.”
When she isn’t studying to learn how to establish her own business, she is practicing it through her marketing activities surrounding the book. Through poetry readings and book signings, Gill’s work has been cut out for her. She held an initial book signing Dec. 12, and is currently performing negotiations with Pyramid Media to film a screenplay about her book.
Gill said, “I think people should read my book because it’s one of the few works that focus on moralistically crafting the mind. I feel like morals are vanishing nowadays, so the book just primarily servers a moral restoration.”