— Said Sayrafiezadeh, author of “American Estrangement”

I am the author of the fiction works: “Teach Me How to Die” and “The Last of the Mentally Ill.” My pieces have appeared in several notable publications, including Vice, Forbes, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, The Huffington Post, Psychology Today and Teen Vogue. I studied creative writing at NYU, and I work as a writer, editor and content strategist/manager in the city. In 2011, I received an award from the Edgar Allan Poe Society for my short story, “All Along the River.”

I was born in San Diego in 1991. My mother is Lebanese, and my father is white (Ashkenazi). In first-grade I decided to become an atheist.

In 2005 my family moved to Beirut, Lebanon for six months. My parents worked at the American University of Beirut, and my little brother and I completed a semester at International College, an English-speaking international K-12 school.

Shortly before we arrived in Beirut, I began developing many chronic health issues that were impossible for doctors to diagnose.

I was not mature enough to consider the possibility that some of my symptoms were psychosomatic.

During our stay, the Syrian government — in collaboration with Lebanese traitors — planted a car bomb that killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri. This assassination triggered the Cedar Revolution, where the people of Lebanon forced occupying Syrian forces to leave their country.

For many years during my adolescence and young adulthood, I thought I was going to become a therapist. After finishing my middle and high school education at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, I went to New York University and majored in psychology. In the spring semester of my sophomore year, I declared a minor in creative writing and considered becoming a journalist who specialized in scientific topics, including psychology.

Between my sophomore and junior year, my health problems reached the peak of their severity. I was suddenly unable to sleep for four days. My therapist diagnosed me with “depressive-anxiety disorder,” a combination of major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

As I continued treatment and dealt with the pain I had been holding in for nearly a decade, my creative spirit fully awakened, and I was bursting with ideas. I realized that my true ambition was to become both an author and journalist.

To achieve this goal, I started writing for publications, submitting to literary journals and drafting my first novel. During my senior year, Warren Adler, author of “The War of the Roses,” selected me for his internship program.

Once I graduated, I worked as a freelance writer for about a year, taking whatever work I could get. In 2014 I secured my first full-time staff writing position on a content marketing team. On the cusp of 2015, my boss hired a managing editor who had been at the Associated Press and CNN, and she gave me the traditional journalism training I had missed at NYU. She stressed AP style, which is why I usually write book and film titles in quotes instead of italics.

In 2015 I began incubating a vision for how I could combine my passions for creative writing, journalism, content writing and content marketing. My subsequent full-time jobs as a writer, editor and content marketing manager gave me the skills, experience and money to complete this vision and start making it a reality.

My mission is to succeed commercially as a publication owner so I can build my own book discussion and literary platform that will also market my novels. To scale this operation, I plan on eventually hiring a full-time employee. At this point I would split my time between creative writing, article writing, management and perhaps production of supplementary forms of content such as podcasts and videos.