Sometimes, to avoid people, I tell them I write poetry so that they get grossed out and leave me alone. Here is a poem I wrote last year in the throes of asking myself, “What the hell am I doing?”I want to be strong.I want to consume strength.Instead, I am consumedby the hunger of others, universal inner aches.Who can I be with your permission?Is it my turn to be someone? Just tell me, please. For I cannot wait to breathe. Yet, I know waiting well. I can and I will. In the shade, my place of bir...

“It is a grief story; therefore, at its heart, it is a love story.”

This article is dedicated to Peter Connell and my Grandfather, James Carey, who both loved adventure almost as much as they loved their families.

For some reason, people often ask me:

“Alana, what are the major themes that come up in your writing?

Aww, come on, everyone! Surely we know better by now Grief and Love are clones of each other, one good and one bad. It’s on all those TikTok slides of heartbreaking quotes that hav

Bianca Oblivion embodies a universal link, with an aim to sew together different artifacts of club music from around the world. By mapping out different music, she tells a story with each piece of the puzzle. From early grime to Turkish reggaeton, there isn’t a sound Bianca won’t try on. This year, she got to take on Glastonbury, which was quite different to the LA music festival scene, and according to her it was a refreshing more homegrown setting in opposition to the corporate and business mo

Goodbye for now, and goodbye it shall be The closing act of you and me On my first night out in London last year, (I guess a night out is a stretch, we went to a pub for like 5 hours) I ended up stuck talking to a very into-himself millennial man. He did that thing where he immediately sized me up for a manic pixie dream girl type. It happens a lot. I mean, I dress like a slutty Disney Channel extra and I only talk about Bojack Horseman and Robert Frost. The fact that anyone willingly hangs out

*TW/CW brief mentions of violence and coercion When I first left for university, someone once made a joke to me: “you are about to find the love of your life, either the man of your dreams or the alcohol of your dreams!” Wow, that’s a lot to unpack, isn’t it? Besides the weird joke promoting alcoholism, here we see a strange pressure in the mere four years of secondary education to find the goddamn love of our lives, whether it be the cute boy you made eye contact with as you were assigned your

Anyone ever see that annoying saying on Tumblr in around say, 2013? “There is such thing as good grief” I know it’s from The Office, but teenage girls took that quote, slapped it on a pastel pink background, added some minimalistic sketches of teardrops on it, and then reposted it after their boyfriend of six weeks named Brandon removed them from snapchat. It was literal bullshit! Whoever reposted that clearly hasn’t lost someone close to them. Or maybe they have and know a secret remedy to grie

I hope I am not the only person who has found themselves in a Groundhog Day loop during this bizarre pandemic. I find myself waking up unreasonably late, unplugging my phone from the charger, and, quite shamefully, opening TikTok before responding to any messages. My "for you page" often fills up with videos containing a format of exchange that tend to go as such: Person 2: "Woah, dude, you are like freakin hilarious bro." Person 1: "Thanks fam! It's all the trauma!" How lucky I am to be graced