© Ivan Coleman
Alison Fell
1944 -
Poet & Novelist
Alison Fell was born in Dumfries, Scotland in 1944. She was educated at Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh Art College. She began writing for Scotland Magazine in 1962, and moved to London in 1970, where she co-founded the Woman's Street Theatre Group, later known as 'Monstrous Regiment'. Their goal was to use theatre to question power structures and shake down patriarchy. Reclaiming the work of female playwrights – or ditching single-author gigs altogether to devise work collectively – these pioneers claimed big roles for women and immersed their personal experience into their performative acts. She held the School of English and American Studies Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 1998.
She has published poetry and fiction for both adults and children, and has written for a number of publications, including Spare Rib magazine. She was joint winner of the Boardman Tasker Memorial Prize for her novel Mer de Glace (1991), and holds a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship for 2002-3 based at University College London.
She also co-wrote Mapping the Edge, a site-specific theatre piece, with Amanda Dalton and Bernardine Evaristo, first staged at the Sheffield Crucible in September 2001 and subsequently adapted for BBC Radio 3.
Her last novel, The Mistress of Lilliput (1999), is a re-working of Gulliver's Travels in which Gulliver is followed on his journeys by his wife. Her most recent novel, Tricks of the Light (2003), is a powerful portrayal of love in middle age.
Alison Fell lives in London.
To make your own nomination download the nomination form here