JTC 26: Creative Writing Graduate’s World Revolves Around Faith and Fantasy

A girl named Kendria becomes a refugee after the invasion of Diolon, a once-great civilization and her former home. She must choose whether to fight the invaders or try for something much harder: peace.

That sums up the draft of a high-fantasy novel Olivia Bacon wrote before she arrived at the University of Mississippi four years ago, and she is grateful for the English professors who taught her how to hone it and keep reaching for new plateaus in her writing.

“My growth in what I know is good writing has jumped exponentially,” said Bacon, who is set to graduate summa cum laude in May with bachelor’s degrees in creative writing and Spanish. “The number of amazing professors that I’ve had in the B.F.A. program, I don’t think I could have gotten that in another school.”

Bacon’s relentless willingness to improve her novel and other works is remarkable, said English professor Beth Ann Fennelly, who taught her in Introduction to Creative Writing, Advanced Nonfiction Workshop and Mississippi Literature.

“That she’d written a fantasy novel in high school was impressive, mostly because she’d finished it, but she had a lot to learn in terms of craft,” Fennelly said. “What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was her fierce determination to improve.

“She put a poem through more drafts than any student I’d seen. And between our class assignments, she was drafting and revising her fantasy novel: a true self-motivator.”

Bacon is indeed self-motivated. She is a Stamps scholar, Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College scholar, College of Liberal Arts Ventress scholar and Taylor medalist.

She grew up in Dunwoody, Georgia, with her twin sister, Kate, who will graduate from West Point in May and commission as an officer in the Army; younger brother, Jackson, who is going to Mississippi State as a Presidential scholar; and parents, Beth and Kevin. Her dad is the president of the Bible Training Centre for Pastors. Her mom teaches biology at a hybrid homeschool high school.

“Throughout my childhood, we’d have living crawfish in a cooler in our basement or bacteria on the kitchen counter, stuff like that, which was a really fun way to grow up,” Bacon said.

Bacon said she was an introvert who loved reading from a very young age, especially fantasy and adventure.

“I’d read books at the lunch table in elementary school,” she said. “My dream job was always to be an author, but I thought being an author was something that just happened to those really cool people, and it would never be me.”

She was in high school when the coronavirus hit, and her school went completely virtual for over a year.

“I had all this free time, and I was really bored,” she said. “I ran out of books to read. That was when I started writing a book, a fantasy novel, and that was what made me decide to pursue creative writing.”

When Bacon applied to college, she figured she would go to community college or an in-state university. Then she received the Stamps Scholarship, which offered her a full ride at Ole Miss.

“I was looking for a miracle opportunity where I got to go somewhere different, and that happened for me, which was unthinkable,” she said. “I really wasn’t expecting it. (Stamps) has been life-changing.

“I visited here (Ole Miss), and I loved it. It’s beautiful. I love all the trees and the flowers. But I didn’t think it would ever be a possibility for me financially, until it was.”

Stamps scholars receive an allowance for travel, so Bacon used some of it to go to writing conferences and pitch her book to agents and publishers. She said an agent told her the book was interesting, but she needed to cut her 250,000 words by half. Since then, she has shortened the book and rewritten it completely.

“Hopefully, I’m going to finish editing this summer and then query the agents again.”

Bacon said publishers and agents have given her all kinds of benchmarks for what it takes to be published traditionally that include establishing a website, newsletter and social media account, and accruing at least 10,000 followers.

“Do I have 10,000 followers even now?” Bacon said. “No. But I’ve been developing a website. I have an author Instagram account, and I’ve been marketing myself, as well, and applying (for) smaller writing awards to build up a reputation and a writing resume.

“It’s a whole different world. It’s fascinating – and intimidating.”

Apart from honing her writing, Bacon spends a lot of time practicing and thinking about her faith. She has served on the leadership team at the Baptist Student Union, including as president. At BSU, she found a mentor, Liesa Holeman, who taught her people skills.

“Miss Liesa’s such an extrovert, and she’s so welcoming to people,” Bacon said. “I came into college very much as an introvert, and I think I’ve left it as almost an extrovert. She taught me a lot about how to be kind to people and see people who might need community.”

Holeman, formerly assistant director of BSU, serves as a missionary with the International Mission Board in Oaxaca, Mexico. Bacon will join her in Oaxaca this summer for six weeks, practicing Spanish and teaching English classes.

“Olivia is a strong young lady with a love for people and desire to serve others,” Holeman said. “She has left a huge footprint at Ole Miss and the Oxford community during her years at Ole Miss.

“I am so proud of how she has poured herself into the Ole Miss community and made a lasting impact, leaving it better than when she arrived.”

Bacon found a sense of belonging at BSU and reminisced about cleaning up the Grove after football games with the friends she met there.

“It’s very messy,” she said. “There’s just a bunch of trash everywhere, but it’s one of my favorite college memories, being out there with all of my friends at midnight or 1 in the morning. Sometimes it would start at midnight, and we’d go until 3. Then we’d go to Cook Out afterwards or Waffle House.”

Despite growing up in a religious household, Bacon has not taken her faith for granted. Her honors thesis is an autobiographical work of fiction about a time when she struggled with her faith.

“I particularly remember her memoir ‘Learning the ABCs,’ about her struggle to understand the Christian faith during middle school,” Fennelly said. “I was impressed by this piece because students so often have little nuance when it comes to writing of religion. Either they hate it, a fashionable stance, or they adopt it unquestioningly.

“Olivia is brave enough to question. Her clear reckoning with her spiritual crises is refreshing and beautifully embodied.”

Among her extracurricular activities at Ole Miss, Bacon was a class assistant for the UM Prison-to-College Pipeline Program, working with incarcerated men at Parchman to write their memoirs. She also served as an intern for the William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing, a Spanish translator and an English as a Second Language tutor.

Thanks to the Stamps Scholarship, she has also studied abroad in England, Scotland, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, New Zealand, Spain, Morocco, Malaysia, Singapore and Greece. Because she liked being on the Ole Miss campus during fall and spring semesters, she did all this traveling during two-week programs, except for one month in Spain in the summer.

The trip to England and Scotland during spring break offered a study program that could have been tailor-made for her: fantasy fiction!

During Bacon’s trip to New Zealand, she studied in Auckland, on the country’s North Island. Being a self-proclaimed “huge (J.R.R. Tolkien’s) ‘Lord of the Rings’ fan,” she went on her own to see New Zealand’s South Island, where much of “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy was filmed. She not only saw astounding landscapes but also enjoyed “second breakfast.”

“No one wanted to go with me, so I solo-traveled,” she said. “I took a plane by myself, and I stayed in a hostel by myself, and I went on all these off-road tours, and it was beautiful.

“I was sitting on the edge of a cliff for a picture, and I was looking out at this beautiful view. It didn’t feel real, but it felt more real than anything else at the same time. I was, like, ‘I’m in Middle-earth, but also this is real. This is on Earth.’”

Beyond graduation, Bacon is following the wizard Gandalf’s wise words: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

She will return to the Ole Miss campus in the fall for the master’s program in creative writing. As for her fantasy novel, she pictures it as a series.

“I have four books in my brain that I’d like to get out,” she said. “The world’s my oyster after that.”

See more photos from Olivia Bacon's Journey to Commencement