About

Wallea Eaglehawk (born Wallea Eaglehawk Ross; June 19, 1993) is an Australian-American sociologist, social theorist, author, and book publisher. She is best known for her social theory of idol limerence, and her scholarly work exploring the parasocial relationship between K-pop phenomenon BTS and their fans, ARMY.

Early life

Eaglehawk was born in Perth, Western Australia on June 19, 1993, the daughter of Dyann and David Ross. Her mother is a well-known social work academic and her father is a master jeweler, visual artist, and musician. Eaglehawk’s mother is of English descent and her father is of Cherokee-Scottish. She is an only child.

Eaglehawk and her family moved to Bunbury, Western Australia soon after she was born. Her parents separated not long after. Growing up, Eaglehawk played competitive netball and basketball, learnt the violin, piano, guitar, recorder, and flute, and was a competitive choralist. She was an avid reader and aspired to be a writer from age eight. Eaglehawk spent most of her childhood between school and in the lectures delivered by her mother.

In 2008 Eaglehawk and her mother relocated to the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.

Secondary and post-secondary education

Eaglehawk attended three high schools–two in Western Australia and one in Queensland–before dropping out at the end of grade 11. After working for a year, she completed an Advanced Diploma of Screen and New Media in 2011. During this time, Eaglehawk founded an events company and curated her first gallery show. In 2012, she enrolled in a Bachelor of Creative Writing at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

During her first semester at university, she was advised by one of her creative writing tutors to drop out if she was serious about pursuing commercial success as a writer. Based on this feedback she changed her degree to a Bachelor of Arts and went in search of a major, settling on sociology in her second semester. Eaglehawk completed her degree in 2015, but didn’t graduate until 2020.

Career

2014–2018: Career beginnings 

Eaglehawk founded a clothing store with then-partner Alex Coolican, Coolihawk, in early 2014. Alongside this, Eaglehawk rose to small-town fame through her anonymous page Nambouring where she wrote opinion pieces about the town of Nambour where she resided.

In 2015, Eaglehawk and Coolican opened a coffee cart, Coolihawk Espress. Leveraging her experience with Nambouring, Eaglehawk began work as a digital placemaker with a local shopping precinct C-Square. She eventually became a curator for a youth street art program, Drawn Together, with the Sunshine Coast Regional Council.

Coolihawk Espress turned into Coolihawk Cafe in 2016 after Eaglehawk went vegan and pivoted the business. In 2017, Eaglehawk and Coolican moved premises and rebranded as Delicats, a vegan cafe and deli, which swiftly achieved a cult following. Eaglehawk left her freelance arts work to manage and cook for Delicats full-time. 

During these early years, Eaglehawk published her opinion-style writing on various sites online, often writing for the Sunshine Coast Daily. Eaglehawk’s early sociological inquiry (2012-2015) focussed on One Direction and her own experiences of being a fan. Online, however, Eaglehawk was primarily known for fanfiction.

2019–2020: Becoming the author

At the start of 2019, Eaglehawk made a snap decision to sell Delicats so that she could pursue her dream of being a published author. Alongside this came her increased interest in South Korea which saw her take up Korean classes and make plans to visit Seoul, ahead of a potential relocation. Within a week of her decision, Delicats had sold and Eaglehawk had picked up work as an arts administrator for a Queensland Government funded arts organisation. This position soon turned into an arts producer role where Eaglehawk worked across a range of creative initiatives in regional South East Queensland. During this time she was working on what she hoped to be her debut novel, VELVET93, which she published excerpts of online. The novel, however, remains unpublished to this day.

In February 2019, Eaglehawk was first introduced to BTS when she came across their music video for IDOL. This, according to Eaglehawk, was a pivotal moment in her life and gave her writing a new direction and purpose. Namely exploring the phenomena of and surrounding BTS, and their fan base, ARMY. The focus of Eaglehawk’s work shifted to completing her original sociological inquiry into the relationship between One Direction and their fans. This time, however, she had replaced One Direction with BTS and incorporated Dorothy Tennov’s concept of limerence. 

Intrigued by the extent to which BTS knew about their carefully fabricated personas, Eaglehawk continued to build her social theory. In March, she found the answers she had been looking for as a result of the release of BTS’ Intro: Persona. She writes that as soon as she finished watching RM’s ruminations on self she drafted the outline of her theory, now called idol limerence. From here, her parasocial relationship with RM–Kim Namjoon, the leader of BTS–slowly began to feature in her work.

By May 2019, Eaglehawk had started two online publications to host her writing: Revolutionaries and Bulletproof. Revolutionaries published a broad range of writing on all things deemed revolutionary and Bulletproof became a BTS-specific publication. Eaglehawk started publishing the work of other writers in June alongside her own, and the publications steadily grew in popularity. At the same time, Eaglehawk was invited by her mother, Dr. Dyann Ross, to assist with a book project. This gave her an introduction to the book publishing world as she worked her way up to being co-editor, earning Eaglehawk her first published book. 

Eaglehawk attended Writing Place–a writers’ residency–in September 2019 where she was tasked with writing a monologue for her younger self. Eaglehawk worked with award-winning Australian playwright Caleb Lewis who encouraged her to write a piece about BTS and to “make it weird”. This experience led Eaglehawk to go through her first creative crisis as she grappled with writing about her single-sided relationship with RM, and making her character push moral boundaries. Eaglehawk wrote that the residency lit a fire inside of her, unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Her monologue, Like Butter, explores the shadow manifestation of a parasocial relationship with an idol, and was later published in 2020.

In October 2019, tormented and inspired by her time on residency, Eaglehawk began querying publishers for her proposed work of Idol Limerence. In December, she commenced writing and completed the book over 38 non-consecutive days.

After being knocked back by publishers and editors for a book on BTS being “too niche”, Eaglehawk founded a book publishing company, Revolutionaries, on January 10, 2020. On March 29, one year to the day since she first saw Intro: Persona, she published her debut book Idol Limerence: The art of loving BTS as phenomena. The book quickly garnered interest and generated a cult following.

By June 2020, Eaglehawk was beginning to take extended time off writing and publishing due to an undiagnosed illness. In September, her first anthology I Am ARMY: It’s time to begin was released under Revolutionaries’ imprint Bulletproof.

In 2020, through Revolutionaries, Eaglehawk published two books by her mother, and one by Australian activist Kristy Alger. She also saw the publication of her first co-edited book Eco-activism and Social Work: New directions in leadership and group work and ‘Like Butter’ in This was urgent yesterday. 

2021–2022: Hiatus

In the first half of 2021 Eaglehawk published three anthologies about BTS and ARMY: Through the darkness, I will love myself–which saw her debut as a poet–Love Yourself: Essays on self-love, care and healing inspired by BTS, and BTS by ARMY: 2020. She then announced a six-month hiatus from writing in order to focus on her now-diagnosed chronic illness. During her hiatus, Eaglehawk turned to TikTok to promote her work which soon proved to be a valuable asset to her company and burgeoning writing career. Though she was on leave, Eaglehawk published a further three books under Revolutionaries and its imprints, which she is now referring to as a micro-publisher.
At the start of 2022, Eaglehawk announced that despite having a full writing and publication year scheduled, she was canceling all plans and continuing on her hiatus. During this time she joined an experimental course Social Media Slay to be trained as an influencer.
In late 2022 Eaglehawk began to release her first serialised book, BTS Not Guaranteed, for free online. Alongside this, she published the second anthology in partnership with the University of the Sunshine Coast. It Begins With Us (2022) now joins Madness in Bloom (2021) in Eaglehawk’s pilot project called Revolutionary University Press. In late December she announced that, after a year and a half in development, I Am ARMY II would be released in early 2023.

2023-present: Rebuilding

2023 saw Eaglehawk return to publishing, which she noted would take some time to rebuild and gain momentum after her hiatus. Books I Am ARMY: We don’t need permission, Fandomonium, and Broken-heartedness: Towards love in professional practice were released throughout the year. Eaglehawk concluded her serialised BTS Not Guaranteed and began documenting her journey to writing her second full-length book, Neo Limerence, on YouTube. During this process, she had a dream where she was talking to Matty Healy from The 1975 about his iconicism, a new concept that she was working on. This led her to shift her focus to writing Iconicism, the book, which is slated for a 2025 release.