Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — Nola Pevehouse, 16, has been telling stories since before she could write and now, will have the opportunity to further her skills.
Her passion for storytelling led the Apogee — a micro high school in Dripping Springs — sophomore to get accepted into the Author Conservatory, which is a writing and entrepreneurship program for ages 15 through 30 that can be used as an alternative to college, in December 2025. According to the conservatory’s website, students: receive personalized feedback from industry professionals to refine their writing; complete at least two full-length novels under expert guidance; launch a profitable entrepreneurial venture and learn tools for building a writing business; and graduate with tools needed to pursue publication.
While being a part of the program, Pevehouse would be able to complete the workload of 15-20 hours per week beginning during regular school hours and at home.
The student said that it feels amazing to have this opportunity to grow in her writing journey and it feels like the next natural step. As the program will start Aug. 4, once the three years are complete, she will have graduated high school and it will have helped jumpstart her career of being a full-time author.
“I have other careers I'm very interested in, as well, such as illustrating [and] working in the animation industry, possibly in character development or design. But, my main goal, ever since I was really little, I had this dream to be an author and write stories,” she said. “I want to continue to pursue that and start publishing novels. I plan on publishing a novel before I graduate from high school and I want to continue to do that and start just getting my stories out there and reaching readers everywhere.”
Pevehouse likes to float between various genres, but she does stick to fiction, young adult, action and science fiction. Currently, her work in progress is a science fiction novel that has an outline of 28,000 words — which seems like a lot, Pevehouse said, but she also has to finish a 50,000-word manuscript before starting the Author Conservatory program.
For her, reading and writing acts as an escape from the hard days. Being able to sit down with a good book, open it up and escape into a different world is one of Pevehouse’s favorite things and got her through a lot when she was a kid.
“Being able to provide that for someone else, to give them a book that they can go to, characters that they can go to and spend time with, but also just spreading the story that I have in my mind and giving them to other people,” she said. “I feel like there's nothing better than getting to share stories because, as humans, we've been natural storytellers since the beginning of human evolution. So, I believe that's my natural calling and I feel like it's a talent that a lot of people have, and getting to write and share has just been a dream.”
The author shared some advice for those her age, or younger, who may want to pursue a similar dream, stating that they should “do everything in your ability to write, spend as much time as you can reading, so you get in all that information, and read good books [so] that then, you can go write good books and never let any story ideas go to waste. Keep logs of everything that you think of and just keep on writing stories because the more you write, the better you'll get and the more that passion will grow for you.”
Learn more about the Author Conservatory at www.authorconservatory.com.
