Alison Bechdel – författare

'The funniest, most satirical cartoon she has ever written – as well as, perhaps, the most prescient' OBSERVER"Very funny and self-hating in a good way" ZADIE SMITHFrom her pygmy goat farm in Vermont, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel wonders: Can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathing memoir about her own greed and privilege?But how can she just sit around writing a book when the world is hanging on a thread?In this hilariously skewering comic novel, Alison is existentially pained by a climate-challenged world and a country on the brink of civil war.Her first graphic memoir about growing up with her taxidermist father has been adapted into a highly successful TV series, Death and Taxidermy. It’s a phenomenon that makes Alison, formerly on the cultural margins, the envy of her friend group.As the TV show racks up Emmy after Emmy, Alison’s own envy spirals. Surely writing her own wildly popular reality TV series wouldn’t be that hard? One that shows people how to free themselves from consumer capitalism and live a more ethical life?!In Spent, the celebrated, bestselling author of the modern classic Fun Home presents a laugh-out-loud and passionately political work of autofiction, and once again proves that “nobody does it better” (New York Times) than the real Alison Bechdel.

DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical.'A sapphic graphic treat' The TimesA moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this.Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic, and redemptive.Interweaving between childhood memories, college life and present day, and through narrative that is equally heartbreaking and fiercely funny, Alison looks back on her complex relationship with her father and finds they had more in common than she ever knew.'A groundbreaking masterpiece' The Independent'A finely woven blend of yearning and euphoric fantasy' Evening Standard**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical.'A sapphic graphic treat' The TimesA moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this.Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic, and redemptive.Interweaving between childhood memories, college life and present day, and through narrative that is equally heartbreaking and fiercely funny, Alison looks back on her complex relationship with her father and finds they had more in common than she ever knew.'A groundbreaking masterpiece' The Independent'A finely woven blend of yearning and euphoric fantasy' Evening Standard**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

Internationally-acclaimed graphic-literary talent Alison Bechdel offers acerbically funny insight into the lesbian culture of 1980s America in this comic strip collection.Bechdel's brilliantly imagined counter-cultural band of friends - academics, social workers, booksellers - fall in and out of love, negotiate relationships, raise children, switch careers and cope with aging parents. The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For fuses high and low culture - from foreign domestic policy to domestic routine, postmodern theory to hot sex - in a serial graphic narrative 'suitable for all humanist persuasions'.Alison Bechdel has been chronicling the lives of a small universe of cartoon characters in her strip Dykes To Watch Out For, which has been syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers in the USA and has been published in eleven volumes. For this first time, this collection gathers the best of those volumes.'So much more than a comic strip... No one comes close to Alison Bechdel' Times

An expansive, moving and captivating graphic memoir from the author of Fun Home.Alison Bechdel's Fun Home was a literary phenomenon. While Fun Home explored Bechdel's relationship with her father, a closeted homosexual, this memoir is about her mother - a voracious reader, a music lover, a passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood... and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter goodnight, for ever, when she was seven.Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf.'As absorbing as it is graced with a deceptive lightness of touch, it is clever, brilliantly pieced together, and utterly unusual. Sunday Times'It's a beautiful (and beautifully illustrated) look at the complexity and dysfunctionality of family through a unique lens - and frames things in such a way that you can't help but re-examine your own relationships, too.' Stylist

**A GUARDIAN, OBSERVER AND FINANCIAL TIMES 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK****A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021**From the bestselling, award-winning author of Fun Home comes this Christmas's must-gift graphic novel.All her life, Alison Bechdel has searched for an elusive secret...The secret to superhuman strength.She has looked for it in her favourite books, the lives of her heroes, celibacy, polyamory, activism, therapy, and most obsessively, in her lifelong passion for exercise. Skiing, running, karate, cycling, yoga, weightlifting - you name it, she's tried it. "Oh, to be self-sufficient! Hard as a rock! An island!"But as she gets older, her body isn't getting any stronger. And in a changing, sometimes overwhelming world, are "cantaloupe-sized guns" all a person needs? Maybe the all-important secret is not where she expected to find it . . .'The Secret to Superhuman Strength practically glows with a beguiling mixture of intellect, warmth and humour' Daily TelegraphIn this, her third graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel has written a deeply layered, personal story about selfhood, self-sabotage, mortality, addiction, bliss, wonder, and the concerns of a generation. This is an extraordinary, laugh-out-loud chronicle of the conundrums we all grapple with as we seek our true place in the world. Truly, a must-gift book this Christmas.

WINNER! Best Musical - 2015 Tony Awards!WINNER! Best Score (Jeanine Tesori & Lisa Kron) - 2015 Tony Awards!WINNER! Best Book of a Musical (Lisa Kron) - 2015 Tony Awards!WINNER! BEST MUSICAL - New York Drama Critics' Circle Award Obie Award Lucille Lortel Award Outer Critics Circle Award Off-Broadway Alliance AwardFINALIST! The Pulitzer Prize for DramaWhen her father dies unexpectedly graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile brilliant one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family's Bechdel Funeral Home her growing understanding of her own sexuality and the looming unanswerable questions about her father's hidden desires. Fun Home is a refreshingly honest wholly original musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes.

CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED,NATIONAL BESTSELLERTime Magazine #1 Book of the YearNational Book Critics Circle Award FinalistWinner of the Stonewall Book AwardDouble finalist for the Lambda Book Award Nominated for theGLAAD Media AwardAlison Bechdels groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.