Alison Fell (born 1944 in Dumfries, Scotland) is a Scottish poet and novelist with a particular interest in women's roles and political victims. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies. Her children's books also pass on social messages.

Alison Fell
Born1944 Edit this on Wikidata
Dumfries Edit this on Wikidata
Alma mater
Occupation

Life and work

edit

Alison Fell was educated at Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh Art College, from which she graduated as a sculptor.[1] She began writing for Scotland Magazine in 1962. In 1967 she married a Leeds University academic and bore a son. By 1970 she had separated and she moved to London, where she co-founded the Woman's Street Theatre Group (later the Monstrous Regiment).[1] An account of the company and Fell's life at this period appears in Michèle Roberts's memoir Paper Houses.[2][3]

She worked at the underground newspaper Ink,[4] and contributed to Spare Rib.[5]

Fell's poems "speak for women, activists and political victims" and have been much anthologized. Her children's books Grey Dancer (1981) and The Bad Box (1987) "deal with growing up in left-wing working-class families." Kisses for Mayakovsky (1984) is a volume of them, and Every Move You Make, published in the same year, is an autobiographical novel. She also contributed about herself in Truth, Dare or Promise: Girls Growing up in the Fifties (1985, edited by Liz Heron).[3]

In addition to her output of poetry and fiction, she held the School of English and American Studies Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 1998.[1]

Awards

edit

Works

edit

Poetry

edit
  • Smile, Smile, Smile, Smile. Sheba. 1980. ISBN 978-0-907179-03-0.
  • Kisses for Mayakovsky. Virago. 1984. ISBN 978-0-86068-593-7.
  • The Crystal Owl. Methuen Paperback. 1988. ISBN 978-0-413-18810-6.
  • Dreams, Like Heretics: New and Selected Poems. Serpent's Tail. 1997. ISBN 978-1-85242-561-6.
  • August 6, 1945.

Novels

edit

Anthology

edit

Editor

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ a b c Alison Fell page at British Council Literature.
  2. ^ Michèle Roberts, Paper Houses: A Memoir of the 70s and Beyond, 2007, Virago, ISBN 978-1844084074; paperback 2008, ISBN 978-1844084081.
  3. ^ a b Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy: The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 361.
  4. ^ Nigel Fountain (1988). Underground: the London alternative press, 1966–74. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-00728-3.
  5. ^ Alison Fell (March 1976). "Nights". Spare Rib (44). Spare Ribs Ltd: 9–11.
edit