About Aja
Aja writes about culture.
Aja is a senior culture writer for Vox. They’re focused on internet culture and communities, as well as criticism and commentary on movies, tv, theatre, and other media.
Aja is a member of the Writers Guild, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, and a 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute. They’re a frequent guest on podcasts, radio, media, and at conferences, speaking to a broad range of topics, including film and media, geek and tech culture, true crime, fandom, online extremism, and the internet.
origin story
Aja grew up in rural West Tennessee, raised on an oft-contradictory diet of evangelism and musical theatre. They were a fixture at regional and national talent competitions, including winning first place in vocal performance at Talent America in 1995. They were a 1994 Tennessee Governor’s Scholar for the Humanities and a recipient of multiple awards in English including the NCTE writing award. They also competed in the National Spelling Bee! 🐝
After majoring in voice and English at Indiana University, Aja spent three years as a copy editor and theatre reviewer for the Bloomington Herald-Times. They spent 8 years as a freelance entertainment writer and editor and have edited everything from screenplays and memoirs to Christian contemporaries and paranormal romances, including serving as submissions editor for Big Bang Press. In 2012 the Daily Dot hired them as its first full-time fandom reporter. In 2016 they joined Vox as a culture reporter.
creativity
Aja is a longtime member of fandom and a well-known writer of fanfiction. Their fandoms have included Jane Austen, Harry Potter, Inception, and several anime fandoms. In 2017, Aja co-created the Shenanigans original fic universe on AO3 with earlgreytea68. In 2018, they co-wrote and produced the Kaleidotrope Podcast, which was nominated for several Audioverse Awards, including Best Writing. They’ve published several short stories in anthologies and online magazines.
Aja likes theatre and horror and regency romance and queer villains and demons and true crime and cult films and cults and fic and fandom and horses and cats and Wang Yibo. They live in Brooklyn with an angry cat named Artemisia and would like to show you their tarot collection!
Social Media
- Bluesky — active
- Twitter — semi-active, but if you DM me eventually I will (probably) see it
- Tumblr (active-ish)
- Tumblr portfolio (old and rarely updated)
- Instagram (sporadically active)
- LinkedIn (longshot)
- Facebook (longshot)
- Reddit (longshot)
- Say hi on Tumblr!
