About Us
Alli Frank
The robustness of a farm girl, the honed sophistication of a city woman, a dash of Jewish chutzpah, and a heaping cup of endurance athlete and voila, you have Alli Frank. Alli was raised in Yakima, WA, the only child of two parents who instilled in her that hard work coupled with a resilient spirit will take you far. So up some of the highest mountains Alli climbed, down insanely steep terrain she skied and across long swathes of land she ran. To pay for all this adventure, Alli has worked in education for over 20 years in San Francisco and Seattle - from an overcrowded, cacophonous public high school to a pristine private girl’s school. She has been a teacher, curriculum leader, coach, college counselor, assistant head, private school co-founder, sometimes pastor, often mayor, and de facto parent therapist. A graduate of Cornell and Stanford Universities, Alli can still be found with her nose deep in a book or hunkered down watching movies, never one to miss a great story. Alli lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, two daughters and terribly cute mini-Bernedoodle. When she needs good food (cause she really hates to cook) she turns to her co-author Asha Youmans. Read Alli's essays in the Moms Don't Have Time to: A Quarantine Anthology, Frolic and Medium. She is thrilled to be able to say she became a Tall Poppy Writer in 2022.
Asha Youmans
Asha Youmans was raised in Seattle, WA, by an educational and civil right pioneer father and a children’s hospital administrator mother, along with a sister and a brother she admires and adores. As a child, Asha was a member of a two-time city champions Double Dutch team, among the first wave of girls to integrate Little League baseball and rode a unicycle, tumbled and juggled as a member of a traveling circus acrobatics team. She also read everything she could get her hands on from X-Men comic books to the “Clan of the Cave Bear” series to Camus. Enrolled in gifted programs while attending public school, Asha went on to graduate from one of America’s premier private academies, Lakeside School, from which her father, TJ Vassar, earned a diploma as the school’s first Black graduate. After receiving a degree from the University of California, Berkeley, Asha returned to Seattle where she taught in public and private schools for nearly 20 years. Asha is a fabulous home cook who loves storytelling and connecting with others by making them smile. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her White husband, two ethnically ambiguous sons, and a dog that is part Yorkie and part who-the-heck-knows. In 2022, Asha joined with Alli as a Tall Poppy Writer.
Photo Gallery
Winner of the Zibby Awards 2021 for Best Author Photo
