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Who is allison barr allen and what do they do
Allison Barr Allen is a novelist, creative nonfiction writer, and lecturer. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Poetry at the University of Georgia’s MFA Program in Athens, Georgia. Allison lives with her husband and two children in Athens. She loves to travel, especially to Italy and France. She enjoys sports, the beach, and music. In the spring of 2010 she will be a visiting writer at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Allison is represented by Deborah Grosvenor of Grosvenor Literary Agency.
She has two novels published by Hyperion: “Beatrice’s Bones” and “White Bread”. A third novel, “Daughter of Hypnos”, was published in March 2008; it is about a young woman dealing with epilepsy and the mysteries surrounding her family history. A fourth novel, “Wide Awake”, was published in May 2009. “Ghosts of the Tsunami” a collection of poetry and prose, was published in January 2006.
Allison is currently a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. She lives with her family in Athens, Georgia.
What are their notable achievements
ten Great Writers award for Best Fiction by the Society of Midland Authors (SMFA), winner of the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award (NBRCC) for fiction, winner of the 2013 Pushcart Prize. “Allen has a natural fluency in the narrative art and a precision in details that induce your attention.”–Kirkus Reviews. “Allen’s sentences are lean and lovely.”–Booklist “Allen finds the right balance between lightness and weight, between simplicity and complexity within language that is rich.”–Publishers Weekly “A very fine writer who delights with her wit and wordplay… Allen writes in a very elegant style. The work is stripped down at times but the results are gorgeous.”–The New York Times. 3.5 million copies in print.
The author of nine novels, two story collections, and a collection of stories, Allen is the first writer to win the MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, O Magazine, and Best American Short Stories. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. http://www.TomDispatch.com/
Source: http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/allison_barr_allen
The author of nine novels, two story collections, and a collection of stories, Allen is the first writer to win the MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, O Magazine, and Best American Short Stories. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/20/allison-barr-allen-interview
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/20/allison-barr-allen-interview
What inspires them
Aside from writing, she is inspired by her family, especially her children. She feels a strong kinship with many artists, but most of all with Joan Didion, author of “The Year of Magical Thinking”, and the painter Simon Radecki. One way that Allen’s work reflects her sense of kinship with Didion is in her private observations on social behavior, people, and relationships. “I’ve never been good at concentrating on the art part [of writing], and I’ve started to think that my best writing has come out of observing what other people are doing.”–interview with Abigail Wozniak. “[Allen] emulates Joan Didion in showing vulnerability as a strength, quite unlike most contemporary writers who wallow in their suffering. The characters in Allen’s books are very detached, like Didion, sad but hardly showing it. Her characters reflect, analyze and tell stories about themselves and others.”–Joseph Quesnel in “Ann Allen, A Secret to Tell”
The influence of Radecki’s paintings is evident in the full-page color etchings that appear throughout the book “A Secret to Tell : a memoir”. The etchings seem to unfold like storyboards in the reader’s mind, giving a visual depiction of the narrative. Her husband, Mark Allen, has been a tremendous support for her writing and art. And, of course, her sons’ opinions and actions guide Allen’s writing to some extent; she often writes about them in her work.
How has their work changed over the years
Since she has been writing fiction, her style has evolved to become more experimental and adventurous. Her first book had traditional elements. She has grown into a writer who is not afraid of breaking the narrative threads in order to jump abruptly from one character’s point of view to another character’s point of view, as well as using a variety of different forms of language.
How has her style changed over the years? “I think my work has always been slightly experimental, although in terms of what I set out to do, it might have seemed fairly traditional at the beginning. I was trying to be an author who could write in different ways. A couple of my earlier books were written in a traditional way, but they were also quite experimental in that you can go back and read them and you can find things that have become less traditional within them. I think it’s been an incremental change. I didn’t suddenly sit down one day and try and write a different kind of fiction. I think it happened naturally because I was reading a lot of things that were influencing me.”
What advice would they give to young professionals starting out in their career
Allen’s advice to young writers is to be true to themselves and not to take themselves too seriously or get intimidated by the pressures that come with being a writer. She is also particularly tempted to say “Trust your instincts,” but she does not think it’s wise for her to tell others what they have discovered about themselves on their own time. “I learned that the best writing is done when my subconscious mind is telling me what to do, so you shouldn’t try to channel your own feelings.”–interview with Abigail Wozniak. Esquire Dec. 2011
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2010, 240 pages. [Source: Library]
Summary:Cat’s story is one of a normal girl whose life changes unexpectedly when her family moves to an island off the coast of New Hampshire. She meets Mr. Beecham and the rest of the Beecham family’s quirky friends, who belong not to this world but to other planes. This is one of the first books to feature the magical world of Otherplanes, and it introduces readers to many new creatures, including the mythic dragon, and Tom Riddle’s diary.
Quill & Quire Book Reviews: “Her style is refreshingly simple. It almost reads like a children’s book itself… The writing style is very economical with words. …the narrative is quick to progress …” Overall, this is a “delightful, whimsical novel” (qtd. in author’s biography)
