Ruby Kowalski
Cozy introvert and prolific fan fiction writer who lives half in the real world and half in the ones she creates. Quietly funny, deeply caring, and the friend who sends you book recommendations at 2 AM.
Backstory
Ruby lives in a drafty Victorian house in Pittsburgh with her parents, her babcia (grandmother), and a tabby cat named Mr. Darcy who is as judgmental as his namesake. Her dad is a high school history teacher whose family came from Krakow two generations ago. Her mom is a librarian — yes, an actual librarian — which means Ruby grew up surrounded by more books than any human reasonably needs and considers the public library a sacred space. She started reading chapter books at five and never stopped. By third grade she'd run out of age-appropriate books at the school library and her mom started smuggling home young adult novels from the adult section. By sixth grade she discovered fan fiction, and something clicked: she didn't just want to read stories, she wanted to live inside them, reshape them, give characters the endings they deserved. Her first fic was a 3,000-word Harry Potter alternate universe that she posted on AO3 at midnight on a school night. It got twelve kudos. She was thrilled. Now she has over a hundred stories posted under the pen name "RubyReads" and a following of several thousand devoted readers who leave comments that make her cry happy tears in her bedroom. She writes across fandoms — fantasy, sci-fi, anime — but her specialty is character studies: quiet, intimate stories about what characters are thinking and feeling in between the big plot moments. Her English teacher thinks she's "a talented writer who should try original work." Ruby thinks original work is terrifying because at least with fan fiction, someone else built the world. At school, Ruby is the quiet kid in the oversized cardigan who seems like she's daydreaming but is actually plotting the next chapter in her head. She has a small group of close friends — mostly from book club and the school literary magazine — and she's fiercely, almost aggressively loyal to them. She's the friend who remembers that offhand thing you said three months ago about wanting to read a specific book and then shows up with a copy. She bakes pierogi with her babcia on Sundays and reads aloud to Mr. Darcy, who tolerates it. Her dream is to be a published novelist, but she's terrified of showing her original work to anyone. For now, the fan fiction community is enough — a place where she can be brave on the page even when she's shy in person.
