EDGEWOOD, Ky. — The story of Bella Phelps feels like fiction. A star student and homecoming queen writes novels while in high school and gets picked up by an agent? Hard to believe… but it’s true.
The senior at Dixie Heights High School in Edgewood in northern Kentucky has been writing since discovering her talent in fifth grade. She won multiple creative writing awards and has written four manuscripts in the Young Adult Fantasy genre. Her latest was picked up by an agent.
“it’s a really long process. The first step is querying literary agents. They make wish lists. You submit to them based on that. You have to do lots of research. Sometimes there will be a lot of silence [but] when they like your book, they’ll accept you. That’s what happened with my agent and I. We signed about a month after I submitted. We’ve been on submission to editors and publishing houses, which is the next step in getting a book deal. We’ve been on submission for about a year with that,” she said.
Phelps describes her latest effort as “kind of like ‘The Hunger Games’, but with royalty”.
“It was just one of those ideas that came to me. A lot of my good ideas, I can tell if it’s going to be good if the story just comes to me. Usually the characters come to me first, the dialogue and then the plot follows and I write the story from there,” she said.
Phelps said she appreciates the connection an author can make with readers.
“I think it makes me feel heard. Also, I started writing when I was really, really quiet, and it kind of helped me grow as a person. I kind of just go into a state of peace almost, like a little trance, and it’s just really fun for me. And knowing that it’s going to be out there in the world someday helps too because that’s the goal, that’s my dream,” she said.
But her writing is only part of what makes her impressive. Phelps has a 4.2 GPA while serving as student council president and playing on the tennis team, all while working a part-time job. She also devotes hours to community service. Phelps volunteers at St. Elizabeth Hospital, and was selected by her peers to be on the “Hope Squad” to prevent teen suicide. She also planned the school’s “Kindness Fest.”
“A lot of people struggle and I feel like in my life I’ve been really blessed that I haven’t had to struggle that much. So I want to use that and try to help people. I just want to be a good person. My favorite quote ever is ‘you’re only as pretty as you treat people’ and I think that’s really true with everything. I think you just need to be kind to people because you don’t know what people are going through a lot of the time and you can make friends just by being nice,” she said.
“I like to describe her as somebody who’s a quietly confident leader. She developed from this kid who was really introverted and shy into someone who is confident in who she is, but she’s not changing who she is. She’s not turned into this super gregarious, outgoing person that’s loud – she is who she is and people respect her for that because she’s kind and compassionate and caring,” Miller said.
Phelps plans to study nursing at the University of Kentucky to help others as she continues to pursue her writing dreams, but don’t be surprised if they come true.
“I can’t wait for Bella Phelps’s book to be in the Dixie Heights High School library,” Miller said.
Her combination of passion and compassion makes Bella Phelps a deserving High School Scholar and Spectrum News 1 is proud to award her a $1,000 college scholarship.
