Dorothy Allison (psychic)

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American writer (born 1949)For the Australian actress, see Dorothy Alison. For the detective, see Dorothy Allison (psychic). For the Scottish singer, see Dot Allison.

Dorothy Allison (born April 11, 1949) is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on cl* struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison 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.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Early life
- 1.2 Education
- 1.3 Career
- 1.4 Personal life
2 Writing
3 Sex and gender activist
4 Honors and awards
5 Bibliography
- 5.1 Writing
  - 5.1.1 Anthology contributions
- 5.2 Filmography
- 5.3 Stage
6 In popular culture
7 References
8 Further reading

Biography

Early life

Dorothy E. Allison was born on April 11, 1949, in Greenville, South Carolina, to Ruth Gibson Allison, who was 15 years old at the time. Her father died when she was a baby. Her single mother was poor, working as a waitress and cook. Ruth eventually married, but when Dorothy was five, her stepfather began to abuse her sexually. This abuse lasted for seven years. At the age of 12, Allison told a relative about it, who told her mother. Ruth forced her husband to leave the girl alone, and the family remained together. The respite did not last long, as the stepfather resumed the sexual abuse, continuing for five years. Allison suffered mentally and physically, contracting gonorrhea that was not diagnosed and treated until she was in her 20s. The untreated disease left her unable to have children.

When aged about 11, Allison moved with her family to Central Florida. Allison found respite from her family life in school. She says she became aware of her lesbian sexuality during her early adolescence.

Education

Allison was the first of her family to graduate from high school.

In 1967, 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. Also around this time, Allison severed all ties to her family until 1981. She graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology.

Allison subsequently did graduate work in anthropology at Florida State University, The Sagaris Ins*ute, and the New School for Social Research, where she earned a M.A. in urban anthropology in 1981.

Career

Allison held a wide variety of jobs before gaining any success as a writer. From 1973 to 1974, she was the editor of the feminist magazine Amazing Grace, in Tallah*ee, Florida. During this time, she was also a founding manager of Herstore Feminist Bookstore in Tallah*ee.

She worked as a salad girl, a maid, a nanny, and a subs*ute teacher. She also worked at a child-care center, answered phones at a rape crisis center, and clerked with the Social Security Administration. In certain periods, she trained during the day and at night sat in her motel room and wrote on yellow legal pads. She wrote about her life experiences, including the abuse by her stepfather, dealing with poverty, and her lust for women. This became the backbone of her future works.

Allison's first book of poetry, The Women Who Hate Me, was published with Long Haul Press in 1983. In 1988, her first short story collection, Trash, was published by Firebrand Books.

Her first novel * Out of Carolina was published in 1992 to great acclaim, becoming a best-seller. It was later adapted as a film of the same name, directed by Anjelica Huston for TNT. The book and film both generated controversy because of the graphic content, and the TV film was aired on Showtime rather than TNT. The Canadian Maritime Film Cl*ification Board initially banned distribution of the film in Canada, but it was reversed on appeal. In November 1997, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a State Board of Education decision to ban the book in public high schools because of its graphic content.

Allison would go on to publish another novel and two collections of poetry and short stories.

In 1998, Allison founded The Independent Spirit Award to support writers who help sustain small presses and independent bookstores.

In 2006, Allison was the writer in residence at Columbia College in Chicago.

During spring 2007, Allison was Emory University Center for Humanistic Inquiry’s Distinguished Visiting Professor.

In the summer of 2007, she was Famosa in residence at Macondo in San Antonio, Texas.

In 2007, Allison announced that she was working on a new novel en*led She Who, to be published by Riverhead Books.

Allison held a three-month residency at Emory University in Atlanta in 2008 as the Bill and Carol Fox Center Distinguished Visiting Professor.

In fall 2009, Allison was The McGee Professor and writer in residence at Davidson College, in North Carolina.

Personal life

Allison now lives in Northern California, calling herself a "happily born-again Californian". She lives with her partner of more than 18 years, Alix Layman, and son, Wolf Michael.

Allison at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival.

Writing

Themes in Allison's work include cl* struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, lesbianism, feminism, and family. French literary scholar Mélanie Grué, describes Allison's work as a celebration of "the vilified transgressive lesbian body." Grué also notes Allison's ability "to make desire and pleasure public" in her writing, in contrast to the second-wave feminist views on "correct expressions" of sexuality.

Allison's first novel, the semi-autobiographical * Out of Carolina (1992), was one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award.

Her influences include Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, Jewelle Gomez, Toni Morrison, Bertha Harris, and Audre Lorde. Allison says The Bluest Eye by Morrison helped her to write about incest. 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.

Sex and gender activist

Allison says that the early Feminist movement changed her life. "It was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change." However, she admits, she would never have begun to publish her stories if she hadn't gotten over her prejudices, and started talking to her mother and sisters again.

Allison has advocated for safer sex and is active in feminist and lesbian communities. She and Jo Arnone cofounded the Lesbian Sex Mafia in 1981, the "oldest continuously running women’s BDSM support and education group in the country".

Honors and awards

Publishing Triangle named * Out of Carolina one of "The Triangle’s 100 Best " novels of the 1990s.

In 2007, Allison was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The same year, she was awarded the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, as well as the Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction.

In 2018, Allison received the Trailblazer Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society for being, in the words of Karin Kallmaker, "the original firebrand. She didn't write for approval, she wrote to survive. She is a firebrand, truthteller, and trailblazer."

In 2019, the Alice B Readers Appreciation Committee of The Alice B Readers Award bestowed the coveted Alice B Medal and honorarium upon Allison.

Bibliography

Writing

The Women Who Hate Me: Poems by Dorothy Allison (1983)
Trash: Short Stories (1988) ISBN:9780452283510
The Women Who Hate Me: Poetry 1980–1990 (1991) ISBN:978-0932379986
* Out of Carolina (1992) ISBN:9780452297753
Skin: Talking About Sex, Cl* & Literature (1994) ISBN:9780044409441
Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995) ISBN:9780006548812
Cavedweller (1998) ISBN:978-0452279698
She Who (TBA)
Conversations with Dorothy Allison (2012) ISBN:9781617032868
Jason Who Will be Famous (2009)

Anthology contributions

Women on Women: An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction, edited by Joan Nestle (1990) ISBN:9780452263888
High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings, edited by Amy Scholder and Ira Silverberg (1991) ISBN:9780452265820
Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice, edited by Mark Thompson (1991) ISBN:9781555831868
Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian: A Literary Anthology, edited by Bennett L. Singer (1993) ISBN:9781565841031
Writing Women's Lives: An Anthology Of Autobiographical Narratives By Twentieth Century American Women Writers, edited by Susan Cahill (1994) ISBN:9780060969981
Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers, edited by Susie Mee (1995) ISBN:9780156001212
Swords of the Rainbow, edited by Eric Garber and Jewelle L. Gómez (1996) ISBN:9781555832667
The Best American Short Stories 2003, edited by Walter Mosley and Katrina Kenison (2003) ISBN:9780618197330
What Are You Looking At?: The First Fat Fiction Anthology, edited by Ira Sukrungruang and Donna Jarrell (2003) ISBN:9780156029070
Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Cl*, edited by Michelle Tea (2004) ISBN:9781580051033
Rhetorical Women: Roles and Representations, edited by Hildy Miller and Lillian Bridwell-Bowles (2005) ISBN:9780817351830
All Out of Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality, edited by Wendy Reed (2006) ISBN:9780817315344
New Stories from the South 2010: The Year's Best (2010) ISBN:9781580051033
Gay City: Volume 5: Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam, edited by Vincent Kovar and Evan J. Peterson (2013) ISBN:9781489580146
The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South, edited by Douglas Ray (2014) ISBN:9781937420802
Crooked Letter i: Coming Out in the South, edited by Connie Griffin (2015)
Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean: Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia, edited by Adrian Blevins and Karen Salyer McElmurray (2015) ISBN:9780821421680
Bad* Women Give the Best Advice: Everything You Need to Know About Love and Life (2018)
LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia, edited by Jeff Mann and Julia Watts (2019) ISBN:9781946684936
The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman (2021)

Filmography

* Out of Carolina (1996)
2 or 3 Things But Nothing for Sure (1997)
After Stonewall (1999)
Cavedweller (2004), directed by Lisa Cholodenko with Aidan Quinn and Kyra Sedgwick

Stage

Cavedweller (2003), adapted for stage by Kate Moira Ryan at the New York Theatre Workshop

In popular culture

Her name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic."

References