Competing for a spot in Florida Studio Theatre’s annual Young Playwrights Festival, 5000 submissions come from all around the world, from Israel to Italy, Russia to France, and even New Jersey, but one local playwright from right here at Garden Elementary continues to rise above the competition, submitting a winning play for four years in a row now. From her first play, Princess Poetry Saves the Day, to last year’s A Beary Big Adventure (which just finished a run on the FST stage) and this year’s A Matter of the Heart, Viviana Serrano has proven herself a budding wunderkind of the stage—and found a place where she can raise her voice. “[Viviana] definitely has an introverted personality,” says her mother, “and writing is where she likes to express herself.” The young playwright agrees, briefly breaking her silence. “I express myself through the dialogue and the characters,” she says. “It always turns out better than I could imagine in my head.” And for folks like FST Director of Education Caroline Kaiser, it further proves what they knew all along. “Children have so many great stories to tell, and we treat them the same as we would Shakespeare or any other contemporary author,” Kaiser says. “We use exactly the words they give us and we bring them to life.”