Writing with heart and life experience.

Hi! I’m Chris Hough—though friends call me Zan. I’m a native Atlantan who’s spent the past 23 years in the city with my husband, Jon, and our two amazing sons, Reed and Nick. Storytelling is practically our family sport. Reed recently scored a double-book deal with Penguin Random House, and Nick can somehow make international shipping logistics sound like the punchline to a killer dinner-party anecdote. 

My own love of storytelling runs deep. My family has been spinning yarns for over 450 years, starting in the Shetland Islands—back when they still belonged to Norway—long before Mother Goose waddled onto the scene. In our house, the rule was simple: if it sounds too weird to be true, it probably happened. That blend of humor, absurdity, and truth lit up my imagination early. By age twelve, I’d already won two writing awards, including one for Michelle, a story about a girl coping with her police officer father’s death in the line of duty.