Dorothy Allison, a lesbian and author who rose to fame with the publication of her critically acclaimed 1992 novel "Bastard Out of Carolina," died November 6 at her home in Guerneville. She was 75.
The cause of death was cancer, according to the New York Times, which cited Ms. Allison's representative the Frances Goldin Literary Agency.
Ms. Allison, who was raised in Greenville, South Carolina, experienced a harrowing childhood, as the Times' obituary noted, including sexual abuse by her stepfather. She turned her hard early life into "Bastard," but rendered it as fiction.
"I believe that storytelling can be a strategy to help you make sense out of your life," she told the Times magazine in 1995. "It's what I've done. 'Bastard out of Carolina' used a lot of the stories that my grandmother told me and some real things that happened in my life. But I took it over and did what my grandmother did: I made it a different thing. I made a heroic story about a young girl who faces down a monster."
Ms. Allison's son, Wolf Layman, who identifies as bisexual, told the Bay Area Reporter that his mother "went through a lot of unpleasant stuff when she was young."
"She was endlessly worried her and her scarred-up brain would hurt others but she was a wonderful mother and I loved the hell out of her," Layman said in a phone interview.
"She was an intensely fierce and intelligent woman and had a great deal of kindness for people she loved," he added.
Ms. Allison was born April 11, 1949. She attended Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) on a National Merit Scholarship and graduated with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. She was a graduate student at Florida State University and the New School for Social Research at New York University.
"Bastard" was published by Dutton Press. According to a biography of Ms. Allison on Shepherd University's website, where she was the school's Appalachian Heritage Writer in Residence in 2020, the book was selected as a Times Notable Book and was a finalist for a National Book Award. It went on to garner an American Library Association Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award, and in 1996 it was made into an award-winning film, directed by Angelica Huston.
Joy Johannessen, Ms. Allison's literary executor, recalled Ms. Allison being astonished at the acclaim "Bastard" received.
"It surprised the hell out of her," Johannessen told the B.A.R. in a phone interview. "She knew that she had written a good book but didn't think it would get the recognition it did get."
Ms. Allison went on to teach at universities and literary conferences over the years, Johannessen said, adding that "she was a beloved teacher."
Johannessen also said that Ms. Allison was "wonderful to work with."
"She was receptive to suggestions and always willing to revise," she said.
In April, Johannessen accepted Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of Ms. Allison, who could not attend.
"As I said to Davis Groff [the chair of the Publishing Triangle] not long ago, the problem with lifetime achievement awards is that the people who get them are old, and so are many of the people who know them and love them," Johannessen said. "Health issues have prevented Dorothy Allison from being here tonight in person to accept the Bill Whitehead award, and health issues have prevented me from being here in person to introduce her, but we are both with you in spirit, also known as livestreaming.
"I first met Dorothy when her late great agent Frances Goldin was seeking a publisher for a novel called 'Bastard Out of Carolina,'" Johannessen continued. "I read the manuscript and fell in love with it and immediately made what I thought was a good offer, but my estimable colleague Carole DeSanti had the wit and foresight to put a floor down on her offer, which meant she could top me and did. So I didn't get to acquire 'Bastard,' but I did acquire a lifelong friend and source of inspiration in Dorothy, and had the great privilege of working with her a bit on her book on an informal basis."
Johannessen continued, "Dorothy Allison is a great writer, and I applaud the Publishing Triangle for confirming that with the Whitehead award. Dorothy Allison is a gifted and tireless teacher who by now has nurtured a couple of generations of writers of all stripes, to their eternal gratitude and ours. Dorothy Allison is a force of nature who produced an earthquake in publishing some 30 years ago with the publication of 'Bastard Out of Carolina.'"
Layman said that Ms. Allison did have to "dial back" her work in the last couple of years. "She was giving speeches before she got sick," he said.
Ms. Allison's spouse, Alix Layman, died in 2022. The couple, who met in 1980 and married in 2008 just before the passage of Proposition 8, the state's same-sex marriage ban, had lived in Guerneville for the last 31 years or so, her son said. (Prop 8 was overturned two years later.)
Since its publication, "Bastard" has been translated into more than a dozen languages; its grit and brutal honesty portrayed in rich and lyrical language won national prominence for Allison. Her collection of essays "Skin: Talking about Sex, Class & Literature" was published in 1994, followed in 1995 by the lyrical and moving "Two or Three Things I Know for Sure."
Ms. Allison won multiple Lambda Literary Awards, including for "Trash," a collection of short stories, in 1989; "Skin," in 1995; and "Cavedweller" in 1998.
The National Book Foundation noted that "Bastard" has been banned from libraries and classrooms over the years, but has found regular praise from critics, who "have likened Allison to William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Harper Lee, naming her the first writer of her generation to dramatize the lives and language of poor whites in the South."
Updated, 11/18/24: This article has been updated with comments Joy Johannessen gave in April when she accepted a lifetime achievement award on Dorothy Allison's behalf.
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