Dorothy allison biography

American writer (1949–2024)

For the Denizen actress, see Dorothy Alison. Use the detective, see Dorothy Allison (psychic). For the Scottish soloist, see Dot Allison.

Dorothy Earlene Allison (April 11, 1949 – November 6, 2024) was an American author whose writing focused on bring up struggle, sexual abuse, child misuse, feminism, and lesbianism.^[1] She was a self-identified lesbian femme.^[2] Allison won a number of commendation for her writing, including some Lambda Literary Awards.

In 2014, Allison was elected to connection in the Fellowship of Meridional Writers.^[3]

Early life

Dorothy Earlene Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on April 11, 1949, conjoin Ruth Gibson Allison, who was 15 years old at loftiness time.^[4] Her father died just as she was a baby.

Time out single mother was poor, crucial as a waitress and bring in. Ruth eventually married, but just as Dorothy was five, her fountain-head began to abuse her sexually.^[4] This abuse lasted for sevener years. At the age be a witness 12, Allison told a proportionate about it, who told give someone the brush-off mother.

Ruth forced her keep in reserve to leave the girl pass up, and the family remained filament. The respite did not latest long, as the stepfather resumed the sexual abuse, continuing endorse five years. Allison suffered inwardly and physically, contracting gonorrhea depart was not diagnosed and activated until she was in attendant 20s.

The untreated disease maintain equilibrium her unable to have children.^[5]

When aged about 11, Allison pretentious with her family to Essential Florida. Allison found respite diverge her family life in institution. She said that she became aware of her lesbian libidinousness during her early adolescence.^[6]

Education

Allison was the first of her kinship to graduate from high school.^[7]

In 1967, Allison attended Florida Protestant College (now Eckerd College) hasty a National Merit scholarship.

For ages c in depth in college, she joined authority women's movement by way matching a feminist collective. She credited "militant feminists" for encouraging come together decision to write. Also get about this time, Allison severed indicate ties to her family waiting for 1981.^[8] She graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Portal in anthropology.^[9]

Allison subsequently did proportion work in anthropology at Florida State University, The Sagaris College, and the New School confirm Social Research, where she justified a M.A.

in urban anthropology in 1981.^[6][10]

Career

Allison held a city dweller variety of jobs before accomplishment any success as a litt‚rateur. From 1973 to 1974, she was the editor of nobleness feminist magazine Amazing Grace, sully Tallahassee, Florida. During this past, she was also a origination manager of Herstore Feminist Shop in Tallahassee.^[10]

She worked as expert salad girl, a maid, spruce nanny, and a substitute fellow.

She also worked at elegant child-care center, answered phones terrestrial a rape crisis center, person in charge clerked with the Social Care Administration. In certain periods, she trained during the day explode at night sat in show motel room and wrote turn yellow legal pads. She wrote about her life experiences, containing the abuse by her paterfamilias, dealing with poverty, and turn a deaf ear to lust for women.

This became the backbone of her unconventional works.^[11]

Allison's first book of poesy, The Women Who Hate Me, was published with Long Pull Press in 1983. In 1988, her first short story quota, Trash, was published by Firewood Books.^[7]

Her first novel Bastard Except of Carolina was published be of advantage to 1992 to great acclaim, suitable a best-seller.

It was posterior adapted as a film apply the same name, directed do without Anjelica Huston for TNT. Position book and film both generated controversy because of the insinuation content, and the TV lp was aired on Showtime fairly than TNT. The Canadian Shipping Film Classification Board initially illegal distribution of the film attach Canada, but it was transposed on appeal.

In November 1997, the Maine Supreme Judicial Have a shot affirmed a State Board good deal Education decision to ban dignity book in public high schools because of its graphic content.^[11]

Allison would go on to announce another novel and two collections of poetry and short stories.^[12]

In 1998, Allison founded The Incoherent Spirit Award to support writers who help sustain small presses and independent bookstores.^[6]

In 2006, Allison was the writer in dwelling at Columbia College in Chicago.^[13] The following year, Allison was Emory University Center for Latitudinarian Inquiry's Distinguished Visiting Professor topmost Famosa in residence at Macondo in San Antonio, Texas.^[14] Live in 2007, Allison announced that she was working on a fresh novel entitled She Who, get entangled be published by Riverhead Books.^[15]

Allison held a three-month residency mistrust Emory University in Atlanta overload 2008 as the Bill predominant Carol Fox Center Distinguished Tragedy Professor.^[11] In fall 2009, Allison was The McGee Professor promote writer in residence at Davidson College, in North Carolina.^[7]

Writing

Themes prosperous Allison's work include class twist, child and sexual abuse, detachment, lesbianism, feminism, and family.

Sculpturer literary scholar Mélanie Grué describes Allison's work as a commemoration of "the vilified transgressive homosexual body."^[16] Grué also notes Allison's ability "to make [lesbian] yearning and pleasure public" in scrap writing, in contrast to magnanimity second-wave feminist views on "correct expressions" of sexuality.^[16]

Allison's first new, the semi-autobiographicalBastard Out of Carolina (1992), was one of quintuplet finalists for the 1992 Ethnological Book Award.^[17]

Her influences include Judy Grahn,^[18]Flannery O'Connor, James Baldwin, Jewelle Gomez, Toni Morrison, Bertha Diplomat, and Audre Lorde.^[6] Allison put into words The Bluest Eye by Writer helped her to write reach your destination incest.^[19] In the early Eighties, Allison met Lorde at fastidious poetry reading.

After reading what would eventually become her short-story "River of Names", Lorde approached her and told her go off at a tangent she simply must write.^[11] Air strike moving to California, Allison explored the people and histories familiar the early gay women's statement presses. "There were some say lesbian writers.

You know, Unrestrainable made my pilgrimage to insert see Judy Grahn."^[20]

Activism

Allison said lapse the early feminist movement clashing her life. "It was emerge opening your eyes under o It hurt, but suddenly the whole that had been dark remarkable mysterious became visible and aeroplane to change." However, she known that, she would never accept begun to publish her fairy-tale if she had not gotten over her prejudices, and in motion talking to her mother added sisters again.^[7]

Allison advocated for speculator sex and was active tenuous feminist and lesbian communities.^[21] She and Jo Arnone cofounded goodness Lesbian Sex Mafia in 1981, the "oldest continuously running women's BDSM support and education unfriendliness in the country".^[22][23]

Honors and awards

Bastard Out of Carolina was spruce finalist for the 1992 Special Book Award for Fiction.

Publishing Triangle named Bastard Out bad buy Carolina one of "The Triangle's 100 Best" novels of birth 1990s.^[24] In 2007, Allison was elected to the Fellowship carry-on Southern Writers.^[25] The same day, she was awarded the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Premium at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival,^[26] as well pass for the Robert Penn Warren Stakes for Fiction.^[27] In 2018, Allison received the Trailblazer Award give birth to the Golden Crown Literary Society for being, in the verbalize of Karin Kallmaker, "the up-to-the-minute firebrand.

She didn't write appearance approval, she wrote to keep going. She is a firebrand, truthteller, and trailblazer."^[28] In 2019, prestige Alice B Readers Appreciation Council of The Alice B Readers Award bestowed the coveted Unfair criticism B Medal and honorarium pervade Allison^[29] and the Thomas Writer Prize.^[30] Allison was the 2024 recipient of the Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Generation Achievement.

 This award celebrated rank recipient's lifetime of work enthralled commitment to fostering queer people. She received a $3000 honour, one of the largest capital prizes in LGBTQ+ letters.^[31]

Personal self-possessed and death

Allison later lived rotation Guerneville, California, calling herself unmixed "happily born-again Californian".

She quick with her late partner training more than 30 years, Alix Layman, and son, Wolf Michael.^[43][7]

Layman died in 2022. Allison sound at the age of 75 from cancer at her residence on November 6, 2024. Companion death was announced by description Frances Goldin Literary Agency, which represented her.^{[4][44][45][46][47]}

Bibliography

Writing

Anthology contributions

• Women on Women: An Anthology of American Homoerotic Short Fiction, edited by Joan Nestle (1990) ISBN 978-0-452-26388-8
• High Risk: Nickelanddime Anthology of Forbidden Writings, abbreviated by Amy Scholder and Provos Silverberg (1991) ISBN 978-0-452-26582-0
• Leatherfolk: Radical Rumpy-pumpy, People, Politics and Practice, severed by Mark Thompson (1991) ISBN 978-1-55583-186-8
• Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian: Ingenious Literary Anthology, edited by Flyer L.

  Singer (1993) ISBN 978-1-56584-103-1

• Writing Women's Lives: An Anthology Of Biography Narratives By Twentieth Century Denizen Women Writers, edited by Susan Cahill (1994) ISBN 978-0-06-096998-1
• Downhome: An Gallimaufry of Southern Women Writers, separated by Susie Mee (1995) ISBN 978-0-15-600121-2
• Swords of the Rainbow, edited overstep Eric Garber and Jewelle Honour.

  Gómez (1996) ISBN 978-1-55583-266-7

• The Best English Short Stories 2003, edited do without Walter Mosley and Katrina Kenison (2003) ISBN 978-0-618-19733-0
• What Are You Higher At?: The First Fat Falsehood Anthology, edited by Ira Sukrungruang and Donna Jarrell (2003) ISBN 978-0-15-602907-0
• Without a Net: The Female Fashion of Growing Up Working Class, edited by Michelle Tea (2004) ISBN 978-1-58005-103-3
• Rhetorical Women: Roles and Representations, edited by Hildy Miller near Lillian Bridwell-Bowles (2005) ISBN 978-0-8173-5183-0
• All Be knowledgeable about of Faith: Southern Women start in on Spirituality, edited by Wendy Humane (2006) ISBN 978-0-8173-1534-4
• New Stories from rectitude South 2010: The Year's Best (2010) ISBN 978-1-58005-103-3
• Gay City: Volume 5: Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters herbaceous border Steam, edited by Vincent Kovar and Evan J.

  Peterson (2013) ISBN 978-1-4895-8014-6

• The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South, fit e plan by Douglas Ray (2014) ISBN 978-1-937420-80-2
• Crooked Letter i: Coming Out wring the South, edited by Connie Griffin (2015)
• Walk Till the Bombard Get Mean: Meditations on depiction Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia, curtailed by Adrian Blevins and Karenic Salyer McElmurray (2015) ISBN 978-0-8214-2168-0
• Badass Squad Give the Best Advice: Creation You Need to Know Fear Love and Life (2018)^[49]
• LGBTQ Myth and Poetry from Appalachia, incision by Jeff Mann and Julia Watts (2019) ISBN 978-1-946684-93-6
• The Penguin Make a reservation of the Modern American Little Story, edited by John Ratepayer (2021)^[50]

Filmography

Stage

In popular culture

Her name appears in the lyrics of influence Le Tigre song "Hot Topic".^[56]

See also

References

Further reading

• Carter, Natalie. "'A Meridional Expendable: Cultural Patriarchy, Maternal Relinquishment, and Narrativization in Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina", Amah University Libraries, October 2013.
• Contemporary Authors Online (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2004), ISBN 978-0-7876-3995-2.
• Philip Gambone, Travels in keen Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans (Madison, University of River Press, 2010), ISBN 978-0-299-23684-7.
• Johnson, Marrion.

  "Songs in Isolation: 17 LGBTQ Writers on What They are Hearing to Right Now", Lambda Literary, April 19, 2020.

• Megan, Carolyn E.; Allison, Dorothy (1994). "Moving Supporting Truth: An Interview with Dorothy Allison". The Kenyon Review. 16 (4): 71–83. JSTOR 4337130.
• Wright, Amy.

  "Dorothy Allison: Tender to the Bone", Guernica Magazine, 2002.

External links