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Alison Fell

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

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

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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

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Works

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Poetry

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  • 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

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Anthology

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Editor

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References

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  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.
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