Victoria Payne is a writer, writing coach, and the founder of Boxcar Writing Labs. For sixteen years, she taught writing at the University of Portland, receiving the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching for Part-Time Faculty in 2017. Her work has helped hundreds of students write about their lives with style and substance. Victoria traces her love of story back to her childhood in Georgia, where the melody of storytelling was all around her. As a writer, she believes stories are the common language we speak to each other. Write Big is her first book, combining her experience teaching in the university classroom, her years as a writing coach, and her profound belief that writing gives us the tools and the wisdom to discover our role as the main character in our own fascinating story. In the last decade, many college bound seniors have used her lessons, collected in Write Big, to create standout application essays, gain admission into their dream schools, and strengthen their writing skills before college. Victoria lives, writes, and works in Portland, Oregon.