Alicia Elliott facts for kids

Alicia Elliott (born 1987 or 1988) is a talented Tuscarora writer and editor. She is known for her powerful essays and her first novel.

Early Life and Education

Alicia Elliott was born in the United States. When she was 13, her family moved to the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario, Canada. A reserve is a special area of land set aside for Indigenous people.

Even though her home was close to big cities, it did not have running water. This was common for many homes on the reserve. She went to high school in the nearby city of Brantford. Alicia graduated from high school in 2005.

Writing Career

Alicia's first paid writing job was in 2015. She wrote an article for Briarpatch magazine. It was about elections at Six Nations. In 2016, another writer, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, asked Alicia to write for The Malahat Review.

Alicia's essay, "A Mind Spread Out On The Ground," won a big award. This award was called the National Magazine Award. Alicia says this award really helped her career begin.

The next year, Alicia received the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. This award gave her money and a chance to learn from an experienced writer. A collection of Alicia's essays, also called A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, was published in 2019.

From 2017 to 2018, she was a special fellow at the University of British Columbia. She was also the first mentor for a Canadian feminist magazine called Room. She currently works as an editor for The Fiddlehead magazine.

Besides her essays, Alicia has written for many newspapers and magazines. These include The Globe and Mail, Maclean's, and Reader's Digest.

In 2023, she published her first novel, And Then She Fell. This book won the 2024 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

Awards and Honours

• Gold prize at the National Magazine Awards for "A Mind Spread Out on the Ground" (2017).
• RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award (2018).
• "Unearth" was chosen for The Best American Short Stories 2018.
• "Tracks" was chosen for Best Canadian Stories 2018.
• Longlist, Journey Prize for "Tracks" (2018).
• Amazon.ca First Novel Award for And Then She Fell (2024).

Selected Works

Novels

• And Then She Fell (2023)

Collections

• A Mind Spread Out on the Ground (2018)

Short Stories

• "Tracks," The New Quarterly, Winter 2017.
• "Unearth," Grain issue 44.3, Spring 2017.

Essays

• "A Mind Spread Out on the Ground," The Malahat Review, Winter 2016.
• "The Meaning of Elections for Six Nations," Briarpatch, 2016.
• "On Seeing and Being Seen: The Difference Between Writing With Empathy and Writing with Love," Room, 2018.