Elizabeth Yu, 15, admits that the weirdest thing about her is that she likes vegetables, including, but not limited to: cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, asparagus, and carrots.  Currently, she is writing a series that involves her house getting kidnapped by aliens with her brother inside.  At first, Elizabeth thinks it’s the best thing that ever happened to her, but then realizes that now she’ll have no one to torment.  As for hobbies, she enjoys smashing balls on the tennis court, being Founder and Chief Baker of Piggalicious bacon s’mores (for which she spoke at TED), and playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl with her brother.  However, she always loses.   

Besides tennis, you will most likely find her traveling the world with her orchestra, performing everywhere from Santiago de Compostela to the Walt Disney Concert Hall.  She is a nationally published gold medalist poet after being the only young person in the nation last year to win Scholastic’s creative writing award for social issues, for which she wrote this poem about the Taliban acid gun blinding of Afghan schoolgirls in Kandahar.  Elizabeth’s fondest wish is to one day own a dog of her own, but all her mom says is, “When you’re older, you can pay for your own.”  Elizabeth hopes one day to sell enough cookies to buy a dog.  Donations gladly accepted.