Dorothy Allison

Dorothy Allison was raised in Greenville, South Carolina, and earned a BA at Florida Presbyterian College and studied at the New School for Social Research in New York. Allison is the author of the poetry collection The Women Who Hate Me: Poems 1980–1990 (1991). Her story collection Trash (1988) won two Lambda Literary Awards and the American Library Association’s Prize for Lesbian and Gay Writing. Her best-selling novel Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been translated into more than a dozen languages, as well as made into a feature film. Her novel Cavedweller (1998) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is also the author of the essay collection Skin: Talking about Sex, Class & Literature (1994) and the memoir Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995). Her work is featured in many anthologies, including The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House (2009). She is the subject of Conversations with Dorothy Allison (2012), by Mae Miller Claxton, and the short documentary film Two or Three Things but Nothing for Sure (1998), by filmmakers Tina DiFeliciantonio and Jane Wagner. Her additional honors include the Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction. Allison died at the age of seventy-five on November 6, 2024.