ABOUT ME
Laura Lai is born on April 22nd as the only child of Maria and Stefan. As a child, Laura Lai was a passionate goer to all cinemas in the city to watch movies of all genres and in all languages. Although a governmental authority was checking the movies' decency, there were still many movies, they were beautiful stories, and the ticket was discounted for pupils. In the gymnasium, Laura Lai was attracted by the study of foreign languages. In the 7th grade, she participated for the first time in the French language competition where she got 5th place in the city. At 14, she was studying in a high school where all classes were taught in French. She excelled in participating yearly in French language competitions. English, Italian, and Latin were other languages she studied, either in school or optional. At 18, she was a first-year B.A. student in Political Sciences—a program in which visiting professors were teaching all courses in English. This educational endeavor continued with a political science master that she graduated cum laude. As a student, she took part in national and international student conferences (e.g. Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, etc.). She also took some optional language courses whose writing challenges were a different alphabet (Russian) or calligraphy and spelling from right to left (Arabic). At 25, she was a first-year Ph.D. candidate. She initiated a successful one-year European-wide non-profit book project that consisted of explaining to youngsters, interactively, a complex political concept. She conceived the project from scratch and managed it in such a way that as many youngsters as possible have a share of it and use it for their future academic and professional goals. This project was also relevant to Laura Lai’s doctoral studies. But living from internships, the doctoral years were hard. The financial resources were too small and the job opportunities too scarce for my interesting research to be completed. The doctoral years were an opportunity to practice languages and get acquainted with different cultures through scholarships to conferences and summer schools (e.g. Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, etc.). At 30, she continued with intensive reading, cultural visits, and deepening a foreign language—German. In 2017, she enrolled in the German Language Summer School (Vienna University). A temporary part-time job allowed the extension of her stay in Vienna to ten months. During this time, she continued her German classes and wrote the manuscript to In Wien. Veni, Vedi… (bin) Vici—Mein Deutches Kreatives Heft. Furthermore, she took a series of courses to deepen her writing skills. In January 2019, she enrolled in the Drama Writing course (University of Oxford). The idea was to take the challenge of bringing together political science knowledge and the passion for dialogue writing into the single-issue drama that focuses more on the topic than on the characters—a less approached type of drama, but that fits her like a glove. She continued writing plays and taking writing courses, particularly from www.edx.org (e.g. Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking (HarvardX, 2020), Academic and Business Writing (BerkeleyX, University of California, 2021), Storytelling for Social Change (MichiganX, 2022), etc. Laura Lai tries her skills in multi-genre writing: playwright, children’s books, and low and no-content books (e.g. word searches, puzzles, etc.). A passionate lover of the way cinematography tells stories, she started reviewing old films for her former Writing Break blog. Besides writing and movies, she loves visiting museums (e.g. Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), Louvre, Versailles (Paris), Mozart’s House (Vienna), Nüremberg Trail Memorial (Nüremberg), Red Cross Museum (Geneva), Vatican Museum (Vatican), the Waterloo Memorial Museum (Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium) just to name very few), and the world’s ancient historical sites. Laura Lai shares the environmental concerns on climate change. She continues practicing German and, newly, Spanish—when time allows. To watch Laura Lai's photo gallery, please click here. |
Writing Skills:
*Academic Writing *Business Writing *Creative Writing *Dialog Writing *Script Writing *Speech Writing *Writing for Games Writing Background: *Professional Certificate in Leadership & Communication HarvardX, 2022 *Professional Certificate in Writing for Video Games UBCx, 2022 Writing Courses: * Interactive Narrative UBCx, 2022 * Writing Games Scenes and Dialogue UBCx, 2022 *Storytelling for Social Change MichiganX, 2022 *Academic and Business Writing BerkeleyX, 2021 *Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking HarvardX, 2020 *Drama Writing Oxford Univ., 2019 * Other Writing Seminars and Summits. |