Allegra Huston

Allegra Huston (born 26 August 1964) is a writer, author, and editor based in Taos, New Mexico. She is the author of Love Child, Say My Name: A Novel, and other books and screenplays. She also wrote and produced the award-winning short film Good Luck, Mr Gorski.[1]

Allegra Huston
Born (1964-08-26) 26 August 1964
London, England
OccupationWriter, author, editor
NationalityBritish
American
Period2009–present
GenreNonfiction
Notable worksLove Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found
Children1
ParentsEnrica Soma (mother)
John Huston (adoptive father)
The 2nd Viscount Norwich (biological father)
Relatives
Website
www.allegrahuston.com

Life

Huston was born in London, England. Her mother was Italian-American ballerina Enrica Soma, and her biological father was The 2nd Viscount Norwich (better known as John Julius Norwich), the historian.[2] When Huston was four, her mother died in a car accident and she subsequently moved to Ireland where she was brought up by film director John Huston (1906–87), her mother's estranged husband (Soma was his fourth wife).[2] Allegra Huston's half-siblings include actress and director Anjelica Huston, writer Tony Huston, actor and director Danny Huston (step brother), writer Artemis Cooper and architect The 3rd Viscount Norwich (also known as Jason Cooper).

After gaining a First Class degree in English Language and Literature from Hertford College, Oxford, Huston worked in book publishing in London, first at Chatto & Windus and then at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, where she was Editorial Director from 1990 to 1994. After two years as Acquisition and Development Consultant at Pathe Films, London, she left to write and edit freelance. Her articles have appeared in The Times, The Tatler, The Independent on Sunday, Mail on Sunday YOU magazine, Harper's Bazaar UK, Condé Nast Traveler, US and Paris Vogue, Newsweek, Mothering, People, and The Santa Fean. She is on the editorial staff of the biannual art and culture magazine Garage and is the restaurant critic of The Taos Magazine.

In collaboration with the poet James Navé, Huston conducts writing workshops called The Imaginative Storm, a multi-day program which they have taught in many places around the world. For five years, the program was offered as part of the curriculum for screenwriters at the Huston School of Film and Digital Media at the National University of Ireland, Galway. (Will Collins, writer of Song of the Sea and My Brothers, is a graduate of the workshop.) She has also taught at the University of Oklahoma and in March 2017 offered a workshop in creative nonfiction at the Taos Writers' Conference.

Critical reception

Love Child has been praised by Simon Schama as "so bravely written, so clear and intensely vivid, so unsentimentally honest, so deeply humane," and by Salman Rushdie as "an extraordinary telling of an amazing life." In The Telegraph, Lynn Barber wrote that "Huston is an absolutely outstanding writer, incapable of writing a dull sentence."[3]

Personal

Huston is the mother of one son, Rafael.[4]

Selected books
  • Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found, published in April 2009 by Simon & Schuster (US) and Bloomsbury (UK).[5][6][7]
  • Say My Name: A Novel (London: HQ, July 2017; New York: MIRA, January 2018), republished in paperback as A STOLEN SUMMER (2019)
  • Twice 5 Miles Guides: How to Work with a Writer and How to Read for an Audience (with James Navé)[8]

References
  1. Good Luck, Mr Gorski at Vimeo.com
  2. Huston, Allegra (30 May 2011). "Life as a Hollywood Love Child". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2 June 2011.
  3. allegrahuston.com/lovechild
  4. Allegra Huston. Allegra Huston. Retrieved 29 August 2011.
  5. New Book Releases, Bestsellers, Author Info. & More at Simon & Schuster Archived 6 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine. Books.simonandschuster.com. Retrieved 29 August 2011.
  6. Archived 29 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  7. Khan, Urmee. (5 April 2009) Allegra Huston speaks of the shock at discovering she was the love child of a Lord. The Telegraph. Retrieved 29 August 2011.
  8. https://www.twice5miles.com/
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