With a long list of on campus activities and two majors to keep up with, it may not sound like Erika Wade has much time to take a breath, let alone write a book.
However, after her first book became available for sale in September 2010, the sophomore was surprised to say she is already a published author.
“I always knew it was going to happen because I wanted it to happen so badly,” Wade said. “And I figured that if you work hard enough for anything you can get it, but I never thought it would happen this soon.”
The book, “Eyestodewhurld,” is a collection of poems she wrote during her senior year at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham. She said some poems came from personal experiences but others came from observations of the world around her.
“Some of the poems are purely from my imagination,” she said. “A lot of themes from the book are dark and deal with troubling issues, but those aren’t necessarily my issues. I just want people to read my work and feel some sort of emotional connection to it.”
Another way she tries to make her poetry more relatable is writing in the dialects that people speak. A good example of this is the title of the book. Although it’s spelled out “Eyestodewhurld,” it sounds similar to the phrase “eyes to the world” when it’s spoken. She said she thought this was a perfect title because the poems are written from her experiences watching people around her.
Writing poems that look and sound beautiful was something she said she worked very hard to do because she wanted her work to sound inviting to an audience and captivate their attention when it’s performed as spoken word.
The students in her cousin Tara Garrett’s AP Literature class make up just one of the audiences that she has captivated with her work.
“In an AP Lit class we’re studying Shakespeare and all the early writers, and her book allows them to see another perspective,” Garrett said. “I think too that it encourages them to write and that was the main goal, to encourage them to have their own voice.”
Encouraging young writers to find their own voice is another goal of Wade’s. For her, the encouragement of her family always kept her writing, but for many children from low-income families, there is no encouragement to pursue the arts.
She said she hopes her story will encourage children with a passion to stick with it, and she is happy that getting her book published has given her more opportunities to reach out.
Wade has had a passion for writing for as long as she can remember.
“I can’t remember her ever not writing, even with crayons,” Garrett said. “I joke with her that I’m going to give my baby a pen when she comes out just like Erika was given a pen.”
In high school, she entered slam and other literary contests that won her a long list of awards as well as a following that has helped her book sales. She is a member of the Honors College, majoring in English and African American studies and minoring in creative writing and the Blount Undergraduate Initiative.
She said she has just started working on her second book and that it will be a collection of short stories and meditations. She is also working on turning one of her stories into a short film, as well as talking with a company in Atlanta about songwriting. She said she is hoping that this is just a start to a long literary career.
Anyone interested in buying a copy of “Eyestodewhurld” or finding out more about Erika Wade can log onto eewadethewriter.com.
