About

 

Born and raised in rural Western North Carolina, Sadie Allen spent her childhood days enveloped in Appalachian culture-- farming vegetables in her family’s garden, quilting with her mother, and wandering the woods of her backyard mountains. As she got older, she gravitated toward the arts-- she spent her free hours drawing, painting, and writing. Her passion carried over through her high school years, where she graduated at the top of her class and eager to explore and document the world. While in high school, her love of traveling began. After winning the Confucius Institute’s People to People Award in 2019, Sadie took her first trip abroad to Beijing and Chengdu in China. This trip allowed her to step out of her small Appalachian bubble and solidified her passion for studying Mandarin Chinese, which she has been learning since the sixth grade.

Before starting her education at UNC Chapel Hill, she took a gap year through UNC’s Global Gap Year Fellowship, where she lived and worked in Xi’an, China, and Split, Croatia. She also spent two weeks exploring Tokyo, Japan-- her favorite place she has ever visited. She used this time to widen her worldview and explore the local environments she was living in. Her travels are a source of inspiration for her artworks and writings. From stories of taxidermied frogs to struggles of feeling alone in the streets of Japan, Sadie writes extensively of her experiences and personal growth abroad.

Now a junior at UNC, Sadie is majoring in English and minoring in Advertising and Studio Art. She is involved with Morrison Art Studio, where she heads programming and manages studio events. She is also a member of the Studio Art Majors Association, which runs UNC’s SAMple gallery. While she is not creating art or writing, Sadie enjoys people watching, collecting trinkets, and spending time in nature. She hopes to use her time at UNC to explore her passions and Chapel Hill itself.