Dorothy Allison
Dorothy Allison (born April 11, 1949 Greenville , South Carolina ) is an American author, speaker and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers .
biography
Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. She attended Florida Presbyterian College (now renamed Eckerd College ) in the early 1970s on a National Merit Scholarship. During this time she joined the women's movement as part of a feminist collective. After receiving her BA , she studied anthropology at Florida State University and the New School for Social Research .
Allison's works deal with the themes of class struggle , child abuse and rape , women , family , lesbians and feminism . In 1988 she published Trash , a collection of short stories that won the Lambda Literary Award in 1989. The first novel by Allison Bastard Out of Carolina (dt. The fear in me is like a big river / Cuckoo children ) is a semi-autobiographical work, which she published 1992nd The novel, which is set in her hometown of Greenville, reflects the southern class and power relations in American society. The first-person narrator, a girl named Bone, suffers less from poverty than from the contempt of white trash by the white middle classes.
The book was among the five finalists for the National Book Award in the United States. The novel won the Ferro Grumley Award and the Bay Area Reviewers Award . In 1996 the book was made into a film under the German title Schutzlos - Schatten über Carolina , directed by Anjelica Huston , and received some controversy due to the content of the film. The film was banned by the Canadian Maritime Film Classification Board . The novel has been translated into over a dozen languages.
The second novel Cavedweller (Eng. Homecoming to Cayro ) was published in 1998 and became a bestseller in the New York Times . He won the Lambda Literary Award in 1999 and was a finalist for the Lillian Smith Prize . The novel was used as a template for stage and film, the best-known is the film with the actors Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon .
Allison started The Independent Spirit Award in 1998 (not to be confused with the Independent Spirit Awards ). The prize is awarded annually by the Astrea Foundation . Allison is also a board member of International PEN and the advisory boards of the National Coalition Against Censorship , Feminists for Free Expression, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award .
Allison lives in California with her partner Alix Layman and their adopted son Wolf . Allison was elected Writer in Residence at Columbia College in 2006 and is currently working on her third novel, She Who . She was one of the founders of the Lesbian Sex Mafia organization .
Awards
- 1989 Lambda Literary Award for Trash
- 1995: Stonewall Book Award and Lambda Literary Award for Skin
- 1999: Lambda Literary Award for Cavedweller
bibliography
- Poetry
- The Women Who Hate Me. Poetry 1980–1990 . Firebrand Books, Ithaca, NY 1991, ISBN 0-932379-99-0 (EA Brooklyn 1983).
- prose
- Trash. Short stories . Plume Books, New York 2002, ISBN 0-452-28351-5 (EA New York 1988).
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Bastard Out of Carolina . Plume Books, New York 1992, ISBN 0-452-26957-1 .
- German: The fear in me is like a great river . Translated by Christine Popp. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-426-65003-7 . New edition as: cuckoo children . Goldmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-442-45048-9 .
- Skin. Talking About Sex, Class And Literature . Pandora Press, London 1995, ISBN 0-04-440944-3 (EA Ithaca 1994).
-
Two or Three Things I Know for Sure . Plume Books, New York 1996, ISBN 0-452-27340-4 (EA New York 1995).
- German: Two or three things that I know for sure . Goldmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-442-44434-9 (translated by Angelika Felenda)
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Cavedweller . Abacus Press, London 1999, ISBN 0-349-11105-7 (EA New York 1998).
- German: homecoming to Cayro . Translated by Sabine Lohmann. Goldmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-442-30797-X .
- She Who (in preparation)
Movie
- Tina Di Feliciantonio (Director): 2 or 3 Things But Nothing for Sure , 1997
- Anjelica Huston (Director): Defenseless - Shadows over Carolina . 1996 (based on her novel Kuckuckskinder )
literature
- Christine Blouch (Ed.): Critical essays on the works of American author Dorothy Allison (Studies in American Literature; Vol. 71). Mellen Press, Lewiston 2004, ISBN 0-7734-62902 .
- Mae M. Claxton: Conversations with Dorothy Allison . University Press, Jackson, Miss. 2012, ISBN 1-617-03286-7 .
- Michael E. Mill: She Who. Dorothy Allison on writing, teaching & her next novel . at WUTC- Public Radio on April 19, 2013.
- Michelle M. Tokarczyk: Class definitions. On the lives and writings of Maxine Hong Kingston , Sandra Cisneros , and Dorothy Allison . University Press, Selinsgrove, Pa. 2008, ISBN 978-1-57591-121-2 .
- Anna Wertbruch: Gender roles and stereotypes in Dorothy Allison's "Bastard out of Carolina" Grin Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-656-02623-5 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Dorothy Allison in the catalog of the German National Library
- Dorothy Allison's website
- Dorothy Allison. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
- Biography at The Fellowship of Southern Writers
Individual evidence
- ↑ Named after Jack Eckerd (1913–2004), the founder of the Eckerd Corporation .
- ^ Owen Keehnen interviews with Dorothy Allison , accessed February 2, 2010.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Allison, Dorothy |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 11, 1949 |