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Frances Ruiz was born in Asheville, NC in 1983. She spent about half of her childhood being home-schooled, which allowed her to participate in many piano competitions and chess tournaments. At the age of nine she performed as soloist with the Winston-Salem Piedmont Triad Symphony Orchestra, playing a piano concerto written for her by her father. She also excelled in math and sciences, and in 1997 she was awarded a full four-year tuition scholarship to UNC-Asheville by the Western Carolina Chapter of Professional Engineers, for winning first place in the Western NC regional MATHCOUNTS competition. That same year she served as captain of the MATHCOUNTS team that won third place in the state competition. Frances didn't end up using her scholarship to UNC-Asheville. Instead she accepted a full tuition merit-based scholarship to attend Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA. She began her undergraduate studies in Carnegie Mellon's renowned School of Computer Science, but after one year she decided that although computer science was interesting, she had much more of a passion for writing and linguistics. She transferred to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, where she completed a BA in Creative Writing with an Additional Major in Spanish (May 2005). Frances received many awards during her time at Carnegie Mellon, including the Hannah Estermann Bergman Award for Study Abroad, which she used to spend a summer studying in Cuba. In her senior year she was awarded the MarÃa Purificación Aguilar Memorial Award by the Spanish department and the Donna Grear Memorial Award by the English department, both awards that are given to only one graduating senior each year. She was also named as an Andrew Carnegie Society Scholar, an honor given to students for academic excellence and leadership qualities. After graduating from college Frances has worked as a Spanish translator and linguistic consultant in the fascinating field of Machine Translation. In addition to a number of short stories and poems, she is busy working on the second book of the Key to Embralia Trilogy and two stand-alone novels. |