Hello! My name is Layla Knowles. I’m a second-year transfer English major pursuing a minor in Creative Writing. My long, intimate history with storytelling as a writer and reader made my creative thesis an inevitability. In my childhood, my grandparents entertained me with stories of Greek and Egyptian mythology that felt realer than reality. My adolescent flirtations with gothic literature and literary classics brought me full-circle to an obsession with mythmaking, from the glorification of gods to our sense of self. My thesis, whose working title is Mythomaniac, follows the most expert of storytellers- the teenage girl- as her intersections with God and other father figures lead her down winding paths that force her to interrogate all she knows and creates. While my illustrious former career as a teenage witch lends me invaluable expertise, I plan to research personality disorders, mythmaking, and Oregon as I ponder nature, nurture, and nutmeg (yes, really). I’m profoundly grateful to UCLA for granting me this generous scholarship and I look forward to expressing this gratitude through my thesis.