Alison Bechdel

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.

This
is the ninety-eight post in a series highlighting the best gay and
lesbian authors from the 20th century (with a few before and after that
period) who have recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of gay
people telling what life is, and was,
during an important time of history.

Alison
Bechdel (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.
7 External links


Biography

Alison
Bechdel was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania to Roman Catholic parents
who were teachers. Her family also owned and operated a funeral home.
She attended Simon's Rock College and then Oberlin College, graduating
in 1981. She 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.



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

Bechdel's brother is keyboard player John Bechdel, who has worked with many bands including Ministry.


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.


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."

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


Bibliography

Collections
Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1986, ISBN 0-932379-17-6)
More Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1988, ISBN 0-932379-45-1)
New, Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1990, ISBN 0-932379-79-6)
Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel (Firebrand Books, 1992, ISBN 1-56341-008-7)
Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1993, ISBN 1-56341-039-7)
Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1995, ISBN 1-56341-067-2)
Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1998, ISBN 1-56341-102-4)
Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1997, ISBN 1-56341-086-9)
The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1998)
Post-Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 2000, ISBN 1-56341-122-9)
Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life-Forms to Watch Out For (Alyson Publications, 2003, ISBN 1-55583-828-6)
Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For (Alyson Publications, 2005, ISBN 1-55583-833-2)
The
Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Houghton Mifflin, 2008, ISBN
0-618-96880-6), a compendium containing the vast majority of the strips
in all previous collections as well as all 2005-2008 strips not
previously published

Graphic memoir
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin, 2006, ISBN 0-618-47794-2)

Stories
"Oppressed
Minority Cartoonist" and "The Party" in Juicy Mother edited by Jennifer
Camper, Soft Skull Press, 2005 ISBN 1-932360-70-0
"A Perfect Match" in Juicy Mother 2: How They Met, edited by Jennifer Camper, Manic D Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-933149-20-2)
"Vermont"
in State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, edited by Matt
Weiland and Sean Wilsey, Ecco, 2008, ISBN 978-0-06-147090-5