Ali Liebegott

Ali Liebegott (born August 8, 1971) is an award-winning American author, poet, and teacher. She has taught creative writing at University of California, San Diego and Mills College. She currently lives in San Francisco. Liebegott is a recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. As of 2013 she has written three books: The Beautifully Worthless; The IHOP Papers; and Cha-Ching.

Life and Work

Ali Liebegott currently lives in San Francisco and teaches at Mills. She has traveled the U.S. extensively, including touring on Sister Spit's Ramblin' Road Show with longtime friend Michelle Tea.^[1][2] Traveling and the open road are recurrent themes in Liebegott's work, which often provides her with the context to explore the experiences of living on the margins, from perspectives beyond that of straight male privilege.^[3] When asked about the lack of female road stories in contemporary literature, Liebegott has expressed that there isn't a lack of female road narratives, so much as there aren't enough publishers choosing to print these works.^[2][3]

Liebegott is the managing director at RADAR Productions a non-profit in San Francisco whose mission is to "give voice to innovative queer and outsider writers and artists whose work authentically reflects the LGBTQA community's diverse experiences."^[4] RADAR Productions holds an annual artists' retreat in Mexico that Liebegott helps run.^[1] In addition, she is the founding editor at Writers Among Artists whose first publication, Faggot Dinosaur, was released in 2012.^[5]

Originally inspired to write the third book in a planned trilogy (started by The Beautifully Worthless) Liebegott traveled by train across the United States interviewing female poets. The project became The Heart has many Doors--, which takes its title from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name. Excerpts from these interviews appear monthly on The Believer Logger.^[6] The second book of this trilogy has "never seen the light of day."^[1]

Liebegott, whose uncle was a blackjack dealer,^[3] released her third novel Cha-Ching! in March 2013 co-published by City Lights and Sister Spit. Cha-Ching! follows Theo who moves from San Francisco to Brooklyn dealing with addictions to gambling, alcohol and drugs.

Animals often play significant roles in her work. Liebegott has cared for rescued dogs. The 2013 reprint of The Beautifully Worthless was dedicated to Rorschach, her late dog, and inspiration for the character in the book. Liebegott has stated that a dream of hers is to one day own a farm filled with rescued animals. Some time in 2011 she rescued a street dog from Mexico and flew her back to San Francisco.^[1]

Currently Liebegott is working on a collection of poems tentatively titled The Summer of Dead Birds. She also plans to finish an illustrated novel. The project, about a post-9/11 obsessive duck feeder, was started eleven years ago and is titled The Crumb People.^[1]

Awards

Liebegott won the 2009 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT literature, for The IHOP Papers. She has won two Lambda Literary Awards, in the categories of Lesbian Debut Fiction for The Beautifully Worthless in 2006, and Lesbian Fiction for The IHOP Papers in 2008.

Works

• The Beautifully Worthless (Suspect Thoughts, 2005; City Lights, 2013) ISBN 978-0-87286-571-6
• The IHOP Papers (Carroll & Graf, 2007)^[7]
• Cha-Ching! (City Lights, 2013) ISBN 978-0-87286-570-9

References

External links

• The Believer Logger
• "Cha Ching! by Ali Liebegott". The Rumpus. Retrieved April 8, 2013. 
• "Ali Liebegott: Highways and Byways". Lambda Literary. 
• "Sister Spit Takes Over REDCAT". The Advocate. 
• "Ali Liebegott Obsessed". HTML Giant.