Harvey received her undergraduate degree in English from Howard University,[4] where her classmates included writer Ta-Nehesi Coates, playwright Kemp Powers, and poet Doug Kearney.

[7] Reviewing Hemming the Water in the Pittsburgh City Paper, Mike Schneider said: "At her best — such as 'Rose Lassi' — Harvey creates a feeling of something put together as well as the best machines that sew and sing, every word a necessary part of the whole humming beauty.

In poems that weave tenderness and violence, the expectation and the surprise, Harvey thwarts the grand cliché even as she courts it, stitching together a polyphony of voices, visions and songs in a patchwork too slippery for any matinee idol to wear.

"[17] Harvey contributed an origin story for World of Wakanda's revolutionary leader Zenzi, and has said she was inspired by the example of Winnie Mandela.

[19] Harvey is completing a second poetry manuscript and also working on a memoir about her younger sister's struggles with depression.