Alison Fell Explained

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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.

Life and work

Alison Fell was educated at Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh Art College, from which she graduated as a sculptor. 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). An account of the company and Fell's life at this period appears in Michèle Roberts's memoir Paper Houses.^{[1] [2]}

She worked at the underground newspaper Ink,^[3] and contributed to Spare Rib.^[4]

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).^[2]

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.^[5]

Awards

• 1984: Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize for Kisses for Mayakovsky
• 1991: Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature for Mer de Glace
• 2002–2003: Royal Literary Fund Fellowship

Works

Poetry

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

Novels

• Book: The Grey Dancer . Collins . 1981 . 978-0-00184-267-0.
• Book: Every Move You Make . Virago . 1984 . 978-0-86068-585-2.
• Book: The Bad Box . Virago . 1987 . 978-0-86068-497-8.
• Book: Mer de Glace . Serpent's Tail . 1992 . 978-1-85242-267-7.
• Book: The Pillow Boy of the Lady Onogoro . Harcourt Brace . 1996 . 978-0-15-100186-6.
• Book: The Mistress of Lilliput . 1999 . 978-1-86230-048-4.
• Book: Tricks of the light . Doubleday . 2003 . 978-0-385-60508-3.
• Book: The Element -Inth in Greek. Sandstone Press Ltd . 2012 . 978-1-90-873702-1.

Anthology

• Book: Licking the Bed Clean: Five Feminist Poets. Teeth imprints. 1978. 978-0-9506390-0-0.

Editor

• Book: The Seven Deadly Sins . Illustrator Amanda Faulkner. Serpent's Tail. 1989 . 978-1-85242-140-3.
• Book: The Seven Cardinal Virtues . Illustrator Grizelda Holderness . Serpent's Tail . 1990 . 978-1-85242-169-4 .
• Book: Serious Hysterics . Serpent's Tail . 1992 . 978-1-85242-222-6.

External links

• Book: Kicking Daffodils: Twentieth-Century Women Poets . Vicki Bertram . Edinburgh University Press . 1997 . 978-0-7486-0782-2.

Notes and References

1. Michèle Roberts, Paper Houses: A Memoir of the 70s and Beyond, 2007, Virago, ; paperback 2008, .
2. Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy: The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 361.
3. Book: Underground: the London alternative press, 1966–74 . . Taylor & Francis . 1988 . 978-0-415-00728-3.
4. Alison Fell . Alison Fell . March 1976 . Nights . . 44 . 9–11 . Spare Ribs Ltd.
5. http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth158 Alison Fell page