Alice Wong, who passed away in November of 2025, was a writer, an editor, an organizer, a fan of nerd culture, a foodie, and a self-described disabled oracle.
She founded the Disability Visibility Project with StoryCorps to collect oral histories of disabled people and share them through tweets and podcasts and images and more. She was an advocate for disabled people throughout her life. President Obama appointed her to the National Council on Disability and in 2024, she was awarded a MacArthur “genius”grant.
She was also from Indianapolis, where she grew up as a close friend Ellen Wu, who is an associate professor of history at IU Bloomington, and the associate director of theCollege Arts and Humanities Institute– CAHI.
CAHI will be hosting a celebration of life for Alice Wong at Wednesday, March 25, starting at 1pm. I invited Ellen Wu into the studio to talk about Alice and their friendship.