Why I Write Wednesday: IUWC Intern Alicia Harmon

Alicia wrote her first (very, very short) novel in a ragged, pink, one-subject notebook when she was in fourth grade. Back then, she immersed herself in fantasy worlds, loved mythology, and adored anything by Rick Riordan. Fiction was a form of escapism; she sometimes described reading and writing as “watching movies in her head.” After completing that first novel, she committed herself to becoming a writer and studying the craft of fiction. 

Now a senior at IU, rather than writing to escape the world, she writes to immerse herself in it. She hopes to create work which describes, explores, changes, and realizes our intimate and political lives. Her consciousness grew after reading Black Panther Huey P. Newton’s autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, in eighth grade. This text charged her to not only continue her self-education but to write in dialogue with her social world. Reading Toni Morrison as a tenth grader taught her how to write with this intention. Not only has Morrison influenced her style and craft, but she’s transformed what Alicia believes fiction can say. Inspired by Morrison’s resistance to writing for the white gaze, Alicia desires to write Black life without holding back, without pretenses, and without respectability politics. Her education in sociology and Black studies, her personal life, and her creative life all connect in guiding how she lives, learns, and creates. 

Her writing goals have clarified in the past two years. With the help of mentors Samrat Upadhyay and Bob Bledsoe, she’s currently working to finish a novel by graduation this May. She hopes to edit that novel and begin pursuing publication during a gap year. This fall, she’ll also apply to MFA programs before one day pursuing a PhD in sociology.