Dorothy Allison
March 23–24, 2015
- Reading: Streaming video, MP3 audio
- Discussion: Streaming video, MP3 audio
Bio
Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child
of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. The first
member of her family to graduate from high school, Allison attended
Florida Presbyterian college on a National Merit Scholarship and studied
anthropology at the New School for Social Research. An award-winning
editor for early feminist and lesbian and gay journals such as Quest,
Conditions, and Outlook, Allison is the author of the chapbook
The Women
Who Hate Me and the short story collection Trash, which won two Lambda
Literary Awards and the American Library Association Prize for Lesbian
and Gay Writing and includes the short story “Compassion,” selected for
both Best American Short Stories and Best New Stories from the South.
Allison received mainstream recognition with her novel Bastard Out of
Carolina, a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award. The novel won the
Ferro Grumley prize and an ALA Award for Lesbian and Gay Writing and
became a best seller and award-winning movie; it has been translated
into more than a dozen languages. Allison’s second novel, Cavedweller,
became a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year,
a finalist for the Lillian Smith prize, and an ALA prize winner. Adapted
for the stage by Kate Moira Ryan, Cavedweller was directed by Michael
Greif and featured music by Hedwig composer Stephen Trask. In 2003, Lisa
Cholodenko directed a movie version featuring Kyra Sedgwick. Allison has
been a McGee Professor and Writer in Residence at Davidson College,
North Carolina; a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Emory University’s
Center for Humanistic Inquiry; Famosa in Residence at Macondo in San
Antonio, Texas; and Writer in Residence at Columbia College in Chicago.
Awarded the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, Allison is a
member of the board of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She lives in
Northern California.