About Wallea Eaglehawk
Early Life
Wallea Eaglehawk (born Wallea Eaglehawk Ross on 19 June 1993) is an Australian-American sociologist, social theorist, author, and independent publisher. She was born in Perth, Western Australia, the only child of Dyann Ross, a respected social work academic, and David Ross, a master jeweller, visual artist, and musician. Her family is of English, Aboriginal, Cherokee, and Scottish descent.
Soon after her birth, Wallea and her parents moved to Bunbury, Western Australia, where her parents separated. Growing up, she balanced competitive netball and basketball, violin, piano, guitar, recorder, and flute lessons, and choral singing, alongside days spent in lecture halls with her mother. From the age of eight, she was determined to become a writer.
In 2008, Wallea and her mother relocated to the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, where she finished her schooling.
Education
Wallea attended three high schools across Western Australia and Queensland before leaving school at the end of Year 11. She worked for a year before completing an Advanced Diploma of Screen and New Media in 2011, founding an events company and curating her first gallery show while studying. In 2012, she enrolled in a Bachelor of Creative Writing at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Encouraged by a creative writing tutor to rethink a purely commercial writing path, she changed to a Bachelor of Arts and discovered sociology in her second semester. She completed her degree in 2015, officially graduating in 2020.
Early Career (2014–2018)
In 2014, Wallea co-founded Coolihawk, a clothing label with her then-partner. Together they launched Coolihawk Espress, a coffee cart that evolved into Delicats, a vegan cafe and deli that achieved a devoted following. During this time, Wallea also created Nambouring, an anonymous community platform for local commentary, and worked as a digital placemaker for the C-Square precinct, as well as curating Drawn Together, a youth street art program with Sunshine Coast Regional Council.
She continued to publish freelance writing for the Sunshine Coast Daily and pursued her sociological research on fandom, initially exploring the phenomenon around One Direction.
Becoming an Author (2019–2020)
In 2019, Wallea made the decisive move to sell Delicats to pursue writing and publishing full-time. Around the same time, she discovered BTS’ IDOL music video, sparking a powerful new creative direction. Drawing on Dorothy Tennov’s limerence framework, she developed her own concept of idol limerence to describe intense parasocial relationships with public figures.
A key inspiration came in March 2019 with BTS’s Intro: Persona and RM’s reflections on self, driving Wallea to outline the social theory that would become Idol Limerence. She established two online publications that same year: Revolutionaries, covering radical cultural writing, and Bulletproof, focused on BTS and ARMY.
In September 2019, at the Writing Place residency, she workshopped her monologue Like Butter, exploring the shadow side of parasocial relationships. When traditional publishers rejected her book proposal for being “too niche,” she founded Revolutionaries as a publishing house in January 2020 and published Idol Limerence: The art of loving BTS as phenomena on 29 March 2020. The book rapidly built a cult following.
In 2020, despite illness, she continued publishing through Bulletproof and Revolutionaries, releasing the anthology I Am ARMY: It’s Time to Begin and editing new works with her mother, Dr Dyann Ross, as well as activist Kristy Alger.
Hiatus and Reinvention (2021–2022)
In 2021, Wallea published three BTS-inspired anthologies — Through the Darkness, I Will Love Myself, Love Yourself: Essays on Self-Love, Care and Healing Inspired by BTS, and BTS by ARMY: 2020 — before announcing a hiatus to focus on a chronic illness diagnosis.
During this break, she experimented with TikTok and other social platforms to share her work, growing a new audience while Revolutionaries continued as a micro-publisher. In late 2022, she serialised BTS Not Guaranteed online and partnered with the University of the Sunshine Coast on It Begins With Us (2022), part of her pilot project Revolutionary University Press.
Rebuilding (2023)
2023 saw Wallea’s return to active publishing, releasing I Am ARMY: We Don’t Need Permission, Fandomonium, and Broken-heartedness: Towards Love in Professional Practice. She concluded the serialisation of BTS Not Guaranteed and began documenting the development of her second book, Neo Limerence, on YouTube.
A vivid dream involving Matty Healy of The 1975 inspired her to pivot towards exploring cultural icons more broadly, laying the foundation for Iconicism, scheduled for publication in 2025.
Expansion and Vision (2024–2025)
Following a successful liver resection to remove a large cyst—resulting in the loss of half her liver—Wallea continued to expand her cultural criticism through The BTS Theorist, a growing platform examining BTS, fandom, and global cultural politics. She deepened her creative practice through Artist, Being, sharing essays and reflections on presence, process, and the art of becoming. She also relocated from Queensland to New South Wales to renovate a 1930s cottage—her first home—with her partner.
Revolutionaries matured into a respected independent micro-publisher under her leadership, signing high-profile cultural critic and essayist Clementine Morrigan in a major acquisition that further cemented Revolutionaries’ commitment to radical, independent voices. With a growing slate of bold titles each year, Revolutionaries challenged dominant narratives and spotlighted underrepresented perspectives.
Throughout 2024 and into 2025, Wallea has continued work on Iconicism, developing it as a landmark book that synthesises sociology, myth, media studies, and personal narrative. Today, Wallea Eaglehawk stands at the forefront of independent publishing and cultural theory, bridging sociology, art, and radical imagination. Her work continues to question how we love, how we build mythologies, and how we shape the stories that define our world.