Lisa Alther

Lisa Alther (born July 23, 1944) is an American author and novelist.[1][2]

Personal life

Alther was born in Kingport, Tennessee in 1944. Her father was a surgeon, while her mother was a homemaker. She has 3 brothers and a sister.[3]

She graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in English literature in 1966. She then attended the Publishing Procedures Course at Radcliffe College.

After graduation Alther worked briefly for Atheneum Publishers in New York before moving to rural Vermont. Alther wrote fiction steadily for years, without success, collecting more than 250 rejection slips without getting published. She was stubborn however, and determined to succeed. And when she was finally successful, with Kinflicks in 1975 she was phenomenally successful.[4]

Alther now divides her time among East Tennessee, Vermont, and New York City. She has one daughter.[5]

Career

Alther is the author of six contemporary novels, Kinflicks, Original Sins, Other Women, Bedrock, Five Minutes In Heaven, and Swan Song, as well as a small number of published short stories and many magazine articles. She also wrote Washed in the Blood, a three-part historical novel concerning the earliest European settlement of the southern Appalachians. All of her novels include lesbian or bisexual women characters.[6] She is also known for her humor writing.[7]

She has also written two non-fiction books, Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree—the Search for My Melungeon Ancestors (2007; ISBN 1-55970-832-8) and Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder and Vengeance (2012; ISBN 978-0762779185).

Alther has taught Southern fiction at Saint Michael's College in Winooski, Vermont, and at East Tennessee State University, where she was awarded the Basler Chair.[3]

Between 1978 and 1980, Alther lived in London. Having become friends with the writer Doris Lessing, Lessing took an interest in her novel Kinflicks and helped get the work published in London, through a contact of hers, Bob Gottlieb at the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.[8]

It was through Doris Lessing that Alther met the writer, thinker and teacher of Sufi mysticism, Idries Shah. Shah had adapted many Sufi classical works and teaching stories for contemporary readers, and, taking a great interest in these works, Alther read them all,[8] and she also wrote reviews for Shah's books, such as World Tales.[9]

Bibliography
  • Kinflicks (1975)
  • Original Sins (1981)
  • Other Women (1985)
  • Bedrock (1990)
  • Five Minutes In Heaven (1995)[10]
  • Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree--the Search for My Melungeon Ancestors (2007)
  • Washed in the Blood (2011)
  • Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder and Vengeance (2012)

Reviews
  • Other Women - briefly noted in The New Yorker 60/49 (21 January 1985): 94

References
  1. "Lisa Alther: American Cultural Humorist". Vermont Women. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
  2. Clark, Alice; Delmas, Sarah; Moulinoux, Nicole; Préher, Gérald; Spill, Frédérique (December 1, 2016). ""… trying to find out how to balance tragedy and comedy": an Interview with Lisa Alther". Journal of the Short Story in English. Les Cahiers de la nouvelle (67): 283–299. ISSN 0294-0444 Check |issn= value (help).
  3. "Lisa Alther: Biography". www.lisaalther.com. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
  4. "Lisa Alther - Everything2.com". everything2.com. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
  5. "Lisa Alther | The Flying Pig Bookstore". www.flyingpigbooks.com. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
  6. "interview". www.artvt.com. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
  7. "February/March 2016 - Lisa Alther: American Cultural Humorist by Elayne Clift". www.vermontwoman.com. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
  8. Alther, Lisa; Gilot, Francoise (November 2015). About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter. New York: Nan Talese Books, Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385539869.
  9. Alther, Lisa (October 21, 1979). "Tales From All Over". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Archived from the original on September 21, 2018. Retrieved September 21, 2018.
  10. Perrick, Penny (July 22, 1995). "Just lighten up, Lisa (book review)". Times of London. ProQuest 318306181.
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