Alexie Basil

Background

About Alexie Basil

In third grade, I hated creative writing because my teacher’s examples for every literary device were always about his cup of coffee. Coffee was gross, and thus, writing was lame.Today, I have an infant and understand where he was coming from.I think “writing” started to turn around for me when I got addicted to Runescape. I spent way too much time in Runescape’s forums and developed a modest following of other lonely adolescents who liked my medieval stories. Off-forum, I wrote a lot of super emotional poems and songs, retyped pages of Harry Potter to feel what it felt like to be Jo Herself Pre-TERF Reveal TM, and started literally dozens of novels I never finished (although one got to page 67).The real magic happened when I read JUNO in high school. Did you know Diablo Cody sums up Jennifer Garner’s character as “Very Banana Republic.” Like, wow. That was mind-blowing to me. How could you possibly describe that character better? You can’t. I was in love.Eventually, I committed the unforgivable sin of leaving Kentucky and going to NYU Tisch to study film and screenwriting. After a lot of soul-searching and therapy, I realized I want to write scripts for kids that show them they aren’t alone. I wish there had been more fun movies in the early that subliminally told me I deserved to be treated with love, compassion, and respect—and not just in a fluffy way. The best I can do is make sure there are some like that in the 2020s. In sum: I wish I wrote INSIDE OUT, Kentucky is complicated, and I now believe that you can never write too much about coffee.