Betz Hill-Hooper
I grew up sailing the San Francisco Bay and spent years exploring the world by sea before diving into a global career in corporate technology.

My international adventures, and a series of romantic misadventures, ultimately sparked the vision for my first novel, Born with the Soul of a Firefly, a heartening 75,000-word YA fantasy adventure often described as Eat Pray Love meets Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

Driven to bring the fireflies to life, I left my 23-year sales career and teamed up with my son, respected media producer Stuart Hooper, to adapt the novel into the animated feature, Firefly Soul, a story years in the making.

Firefly Soul offers a more balanced take on gender than many family titles of the last two decades, with an underlying humor that resonates with both kids and adults.

I’m a flexible, prolific writer, and most at home in the act of writing and rewriting across my eight ongoing projects, ranging from the Firefly cartoon series, to a comedic series about turning 60, to Angesom, a powerful feature based on the true story of a boy growing up amidst war and famine in Tigray, Ethiopia.

To me, science and love are the keys to the world.