Partner Alix Layman
Queer Places:
Florida State University, 600 W College Ave, Tallahassee, FL 32306, Stati Uniti
Eckerd College, 4200 54th Ave S, St. Petersburg, FL 33711, Stati Uniti
MacDowell Colony, 100 High St, Peterborough, NH 03458
Dorothy
Allison (born April 11, 1949) is an American writer from South Carolina
whose writing expresses themes of
class struggle,
sexual abuse,
child
abuse,
feminism and
lesbianism.
She is a self-identified lesbian
femme.[1]
She has won a number of awards for her writing, including several
Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the
Fellowship of Southern Writers.[2]
In the early 1970s, Allison attended Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) on a National Merit scholarship. While in college, she joined the women's movement by way of a feminist collective. She credits "militant feminists" for encouraging her decision to write. After graduating with a B.A. in anthropology,[4] she did graduate studies in anthropology at Florida State University.
Allison's first novel, the semi-autobiographical Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) was one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award.[4] Graphic in its depiction of Southern poverty, family ties, illegitimacy, child abuse, and rape, Bastard won the Ferro Grumley and Bay Area Reviewers Award for fiction. The novel has been translated into more than a dozen languages. It was adapted as a film that premiered in 1996 on Showtime.
Cavedweller, Allison's second novel, was published in 1998 and became a New York Times bestseller. It won the 1998 Lambda Literary Award for fiction and was a finalist for the Lillian Smith Prize. Cavedweller has been adapted for the stage and screen, most notably in the 2004 film of the same name starring Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, directed by Lisa Cholodenko..
Allison's book Trash: Short Stories was published in 1988 by Firebrand Books. Revised editions were published by Penguin (1990) and Plume (2002) with additional short stories such as "Compassion" and "Deciding to Live. It won 1989 Lambda Literary Awards for "Best Lesbian Small Press Book" and "Best Lesbian Fiction".
Featured in
Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay
and Lesbian Writers by Robert Giard [Rights Notice: Copyright Jonathan G. Silin (jsilin@optonline.net)]
Eckerd College, 4200 54th Ave S, St. Petersburg, FL 33711, Stati Uniti
Influences include Toni Morrison, Bertha Harris, and Audre Lorde. Allison says The Bluest Eye helped her to write about incest. In 1975, Allison took a class from Harris at Sagaris, a feminist theory institute in Plainfield, Vermont. Harris told her to be "honest and fearless, especially when writing about lesbianism." In the early 1980s, Allison met Lorde at a poetry reading. After reading what would eventually become her short-story "River of Names," Lorde approached her and told her that she simply must write.[5]
She lives in Monte Rio, California with her partner, Alix Layman, and son, Wolf. She was a good friends of author Bo Huston, whose partner, Dan Carmel, is the biological father of Wolf.
My published books:
