STERLING – Long before she wove stories of the underdogs of society, Sterling native Alyssa Oltmanns was a toddler author dictating tales to her mother while drawing pictures with her crayons.

“The stories she came up with were just unbelievable, and I have some of her early pictures framed,” said her mother, Nancy Oltmanns, a retired teacher. “It was so much fun, but she was really bossy. I suppose if you’re going to make it, you have to be aggressive and know what you want.”

My, how far she’s come. Next week, the 29-year-old's battle for the downtrodden will take center stage under the lights at Manhattan Repertory Theatre, part of the venue’s Summer One Act Play $1,500 Challenge. Her play, “Transgression,” follows a teen struggling to come out as a transgender girl.

“My whole life, I’ve been aware of social issues and advocating for the oppressed and the underdog,” Oltmanns said. “The more I studied that on an academic level in college, the more aware I became of the myriad issues out there, and how much my voice could be put to use in affecting change for those issues.”

The subject matter has hit harder and closer to home over the years. Her senior year at University of Illinois in Chicago, she worked as an office aide in the gender and women’s studies department, where she met professor and muse Jennifer Rupert.

“When I moved to Chicago, immediately, so many people within my social circle were out transgender people,” Oltmanns said. “I realized other people from maybe my previous life in small-town America were transgender and moving to the city. Working with [Rupert] was a real game-changer, and she became a mentor for me.”

Oltmanns was the gender and sexuality outreach coordinator at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point or, as she calls it, “Middle-of-the-Woods, Wisconsin,” from 2013 to 2015, and marveled at how many transgender people approached her about resources.

“I was really amazed at the size of the transgender population there,” she said. “It was really telling, that there is a transgender population wherever you are."

“Transgression” opens June 16, with performances June 18 and 20. Her parents will be there for the finale.

If it’s well-received, it will advance to the semifinals with the hopes of reaching the finals at the end of the month. There’s a full-length version she’s submitted to an LGBTQ-specific contest, and many other contests begin taking submissions in July.

“When the calendar turns, I’ll be getting it out there anywhere I can,” she said, adding that she’s submitted the one-act version to a festival run by Broadway producers. “But next Thursday, this is the world premiere, if you will.”

It’s just one of many works she’s finished since she competed in a statewide young author competition at the age of 7.

Her piece “Bazooka Bisexuality” recently was published in 429Magazine, an LGBTQ publication. She’s begun writing another play, and has penned “dozens and dozens” of short stories, poems and narrative essays. She’s written three novels, the first of which, “A Wave,” she finished at 18, during her freshman year at University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

It took her about 6 months to write, and came on the heels of her mother losing her job as a teacher. The predominantly nonfiction story centers around her job at the since-closed Title Wave Video in town, a job she, as an only child, picked up to try to help buoy her family.

“You know, I didn’t realize why she did that,” her mom said. “I just thought she wanted to hang out there because it was cool. She’s good at hiding things. I think it’s an only-child thing.”

“High school issues got tied into the novel, as well,” Oltmanns said. “It was a coming-of-age story I wanted to get out there to help other high school kids around my age feel empowered.”

That’s the crux of so many of her works: connecting with readers and, subsequently, creating an introspective space in which a message can resonate.

“It was very cathartic to me writing that novel,” she said. “I wanted to reflect on a simpler time, but a simple time that had so much baggage with it.”

That’s why nonfiction is her genre of choice.

“Anyone can make up a story,” she said. “It’s true stories that are the most hard-hitting. Bravely sharing a true story? That really makes the reader do more than passively read. It makes them explore themselves.”

Nancy said it makes her proud that philanthropy is so often central to her daughter's writing.

“That’s always been in our family: to help and nurture people who are less fortunate and put in difficult spots,” she said. “What she’s doing is a logical follow-through on her moral and political beliefs.”

A study conducted by the National Center Transgender Equality states that nearly half of transgender people attempt suicide at some point in their lives.

“That’s a reflection on society, not transgender people,” Oltmanns said. “What are we doing to them that’s making them so miserable?”

She already has a master’s in higher education from Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa, and is completing a master’s in educational theater at New York University, after which she’ll tackle a third master’s in fine arts in creative writing at Columbia College in Chicago.

“I like being busy – what can I say?” she said.

There is, however, a much more pragmatic end game. She loves to teach, she loves theater, and she loves to write. She loves Chicago, but loves her friends and family in her hometown. So the pie in the sky is a job – or combination of jobs – in the Second City that incorporates all her passions.

“I’ve always had the struggle to differentiate the two biggest parts of my life – to pick one path and follow it,” she said. “I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I can’t do that, and that’s OK. Words and theater are married, and you can’t have one without the other.”