Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel at a London signing for Fun Home, 2006
Born September 10, 1960 (1960-09-10) (age 51)
Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, United States
Occupation cartoonist, author
Nationality American
Genres autobiography, social commentary
Literary movement underground
Notable work(s) Dykes To Watch Out For, Fun Home
www.dykestowatchoutfor.com

Alison Bechdel ( /bɛkdəl/ bek-dəl; born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, in 2006 she became a best-selling and critically acclaimed author with her graphic memoir Fun Home.

Contents

Early life

Alison Bechdel was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania to Roman Catholic parents who were teachers. Bechdel's brother is keyboard player John Bechdel, who has worked with many bands including Ministry. Her family also owned and operated a funeral home. She attended Simon's Rock College and then Oberlin College, graduating in 1981.

Career

Bechdel moved to New York City and applied to many art schools but was rejected and worked in a number of office jobs in the publishing industry.

She began Dykes to Watch Out For as a single drawing labeled "Marianne, dissatisfied with the morning brew: Dykes to Watch Out For, plate no. 27".[4] An acquaintance recommended she send her work to Womannews, a newspaper, which began to publish the strip regularly beginning with the July—August 1983 issue. After a year, other outlets began running the strip.

In the first years, Dykes to Watch Out For consisted of unconnected strips without a regular cast or serialized storyline. Bechdel introduced her regular characters, Mo and her friends, in 1987 while living in St. Paul, Minnesota. She became a full-time cartoonist in 1990 and later moved near Burlington, Vermont. She currently resides in Bolton, Vermont.

Dykes to Watch Out For is the origin of the Bechdel test.

In addition to Dykes to Watch Out For, Bechdel has also written and drawn autobiographical strips and has done illustrations for magazines and websites. In 1988, she began a short-lived page-length strip about the staff of a queer newspaper, titled "Servants to the Cause", for The Advocate.

Fun Home

Main article: Fun Home

In 2006, Bechdel published Fun Home, an autobiographical "tragicomic" chronicling her childhood and the years before and after her father's death. Fun Home has received more widespread mainstream attention than Bechdel's earlier work, with reviews in Entertainment Weekly, People and several features in The New York Times. Fun Home spent two weeks on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list.[5][6]

Fun Home was hailed as one of the best books of 2006 by numerous sources, including The New York Times,[7] amazon.com,[8][9] The Times of London,[10] Publishers Weekly,[11] salon.com,[12] New York magazine,[13] and Entertainment Weekly.[13]

Time magazine named Alison Bechdel's Fun Home number one of its "10 Best Books of the Year." Lev Grossman and Richard LeCayo described Fun Home as "the unlikeliest literary success of 2006," and called it "a stunning memoir about a girl growing up in a small town with her cryptic, perfectionist dad and slowly realizing that a) she is gay and b) he is too. ... Bechdel's breathtakingly smart commentary duets with eloquent line drawings. Forget genre and sexual orientation: this is a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other."[14]

Fun Home was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award in the memoir/autobiography category.[15][16] It also won the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.[17] Fun Home was also nominated for the Best Graphic Album award, and Bechdel was nominated for Best Writer/Artist.[18]

Later work

Dykes to Watch Out For was suspended in 2008 so that Bechdel can work on another graphic memoir, with the working title Love Life: A Case Study.[19] It will focus on Bechdel's relationships. Bechdel describes its themes as "the self, subjectivity, desire, the nature of reality, that sort of thing".[20]

Personal life

In February 2004, Bechdel married her partner since 1992, Amy Rubin, in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. However, all same-sex marriage licenses given by the city at that time were subsequently voided by the California Supreme Court. Bechdel and Rubin separated in 2006.[21]

In November 2006 Bechdel was invited to sit on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.

Bibliography

Collections

Graphic memoir

Stories

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Emmert, Lynn (April 2007). "Life Drawing". The Comics Journal (Seattle, [[Washington (U.S. state)|]]: Fantagraphics Books) (282): pp. 50–51 
  2. ^ Forney, Ellen (2007-05-24). "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Mom!!!!!". blog. http://www.ellenforney.com/blog/2007/05/24/happy-birthday-mom/. Retrieved 2007-08-07. 
  3. ^ Braddock, Paige. "Gay Creators: Paige Braddock". Gay League. Archived from the original on 2007-05-22. http://web.archive.org/web/20070522181822/http://www.gayleague.com/gay/creators/paigebraddock.php. Retrieved 2007-08-07. 
  4. ^ The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1998), p. ??
  5. ^ "Hardcover Nonfiction". New York Times. 2006-07-09. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/books/bestseller/0709besthardnonfiction.html?ex=1155096000&en=aaca93d5bcae9024&ei=5070. Retrieved 2006-12-18. 
  6. ^ "Hardcover Nonfiction". New York Times. 2006-07-16. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/books/bestseller/0716besthardnonfiction.html?ex=1155096000&en=516fbdccced8ce0c&ei=5070. Retrieved 2006-12-18. 
  7. ^ "100 Notable Books of the Year". Sunday Book Review (New York Times). 2006-12-03. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/review/20061203notable-books.html?ref=books. Retrieved 2006-12-12. 
  8. ^ "Best Books of 2006: Editors' Top 50". amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ref%5F=amb%5Flink%5F3914172%5F1&docId=1000024441&plpage=2. Retrieved 2006-12-18. 
  9. ^ "Best of 2006 Top 10 Editors' Picks: Memoirs". amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/1000020751/. Retrieved 2006-12-18. 
  10. ^ Gatti, Tom (2006-12-16). "The 10 best books of 2006: number 10—Fun Home". The Times (London). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-2504697,00.html. Retrieved 2006-12-18. 
  11. ^ "The First Annual PW Comics Week Critic's Poll". Publishers Weekly Online (Publishers Weekly). 2006-12-19. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6401289.html?nid=2789. Retrieved 2006-12-19. 
  12. ^ Miller, Laura; Hillary Frey (2006-12-12). "Best debuts of 2006". salon.com. http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2006/12/12/debut/. Retrieved 2006-12-12. 
  13. ^ a b Bonanos, Christopher; Logan Hill, Jim Holt et al. (2006-12-18 cover date). "The Year in Books". New York. http://nymag.com/arts/cultureawards/2006/25308/. Retrieved 2006-12-12. 
  14. ^ Grossman, Lev; Richard Lacayo (2006-12-17). "10 Best Books". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570801,00.html. Retrieved 2006-12-18. 
  15. ^ Getlin, Josh (2007-01-21). "Book Critics Circle nominees declared". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-books21jan21,1,7580597.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true. Retrieved 2007-01-22. 
  16. ^ "NBCC Awards Finalists". National Book Critics Circle website. Archived from the original on 2006-10-02. http://web.archive.org/web/20061002082415/http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=finalists. Retrieved 2007-01-22. 
  17. ^ "The 2007 Eisner Awards: Winners List". San Diego Comic-Con website. http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_07win.shtml. Retrieved 2007-07-31. 
  18. ^ "The 2007 Eisner Awards: 2007 Master Nominations List". San Diego Comic-Con website. http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_07nom.shtml#nomlist. Retrieved 2007-07-31. 
  19. ^ Thornton, Matthew (2007-02-19). "Houghton's Next Bechdel Graphic Memoir". Publishers Weekly. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6417353.html. Retrieved 2007-08-14. 
  20. ^ Garner, Dwight (2007-07-20). "Stray Questions for: Alison Bechdel" (blog). Paper Cuts. New York Times. http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/stray-questions-for-alison-bechdel/. Retrieved 2007-08-14. 
  21. ^ Burkeman, Oliver (2006-10-16). "A life stripped bare" (free registration required). The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1923213,00.html. Retrieved 2007-01-22. 

External links