Background
Alison Kennedy was born on October 22, 1965 in Dundee, City of Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom. She is the daughter of Robert Alan Kennedy, a psychology lecturer, and Edwardene Mildred, a teacher. Her parents divorced in 1976.
Alison Louise Kennedy, photo by Robin Niedojadlo
Alison Louise Kennedy, photo by Robin Niedojadlo
Alison Louise Kennedy, photo by Robin Niedojadlo
Alison Louise Kennedy, photo by Robin Niedojadlo
Alison Louise Kennedy, photo by Robin Niedojadlo
Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom
Alison Kennedy attended High School of Dundee.
Convetry, United Kingdom
In 1986 Alison Kennedy received a Bachelor of Arts in theatre studies and drama with honors from the Warwick University.
Speaking in Santa Fe at a Lannan Foundation Event with the late Gill Dennis
Speaking in Santa Fe at a Lannan Foundation Event with the late Gill Dennis
(The heroes and heroines of Night Geometry and the Garscad...)
The heroes and heroines of Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains, A.L. Kennedy's first collection of stories, are small people - the kind who inhabit the silence in libraries, who never appear on screen and who never make the headlines. Often alone and sometimes lonely, her characters ponder the mysteries of sex and death...and the ability of public transport to affect our lives.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0099450062/?tag=2022091-20
1990
(Mary Margaret Hamilton was educated in Scotland. She was ...)
Mary Margaret Hamilton was educated in Scotland. She was born there too. These may not have been the best possible options, but they were the only ones on offer at the time. Although her father did his best, her knowledge of life is perhaps a little incomplete. Margaret knows the best way to look at the moon, how to wake on time and how to breathe fire. Now she must learn how to live. A. L. Kennedy's absorbing, moving and gently political first novel dissects the intricate difficulties of human relationships, from Margaret's passionate attachment to her father and her more problematic involvement with Colin, her lover, to the wider social relations between pupil and teacher, employer and employee, individual and state.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ASOW2K/?tag=2022091-20
1993
(Exposing and exploring the sinuous undercurrents of viole...)
Exposing and exploring the sinuous undercurrents of violence, anguish and love, A.L. Kennedy examines the nature of the individual, both in isolation and society, as characters define and deny their chosen identities. While showing us the unlikeliness of intimacy and the impossibility of communication, Kennedy also reveals the subversive liberation of impotence, the humour of discomfort as human beings chafe together, the crazed claustrophobia of the family adn the wildly funny results of an eccentricity unleashed.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004C055MC/?tag=2022091-20
1994
(M. Jennifer Wilson is a mid-thirties radio announcer livi...)
M. Jennifer Wilson is a mid-thirties radio announcer living in Glasgow. She shares a house with Art and Liz, two typical Scotland thirtysomethings, but her life takes a drastic turn with the arrival of her new housemate, an elusive man who glows in the dark and can't remember his name. He soon reveals himself to be none other than Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, the famed writer and duelist of eighteenth-century France, and what unfolds is a love story stark and surreal, tender and humane.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375707247/?tag=2022091-20
1995
(Emotionally numb, crippled with insomnia, and caught in a...)
Emotionally numb, crippled with insomnia, and caught in a frightening, abusive marriage, Helen Brindle believes that God has recently left her. She spends her days performing banal domestic chores in front of a blaring television. On the BBC one day she watches a self-help guru expound on, among other things, the "rules" of masturbation and the importance of "interior lives." Edward G. Gluck, she discovers has developed a program that guides lost souls toward contentment. Helen seeks him out, hoping to find an answer. Instead she discovers Gluck's own sadomasochistic obsession, and his profound shame and disgust. And what they both encounter, painfully, is the love each fears and both yearn to embrace.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375702784/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, released in 1943, is...)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, released in 1943, is regarded as one of the masterpieces of British cinema. In this interpretation of the film, A.L. Kennedy finds it to be a complex and richly ambiguous dissection of what it means to be English, and what it is to be "at home".
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0851705685/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(From the prodigiously talented A. L. Kennedy comes a flam...)
From the prodigiously talented A. L. Kennedy comes a flamboyantly stylish and fiercely emotional novel about fathers and daughters, creation and self-destruction, and love’s paradoxical power to heal its most devastated victims. One such victim is Nathan Staples, a writer whose hilarious contempt for humanity is surpassed only by his corrosive self-loathing. Along with five equally dysfunctional colleagues Nathan lives on an island retreat off the coast of Wales, where he yearns for the daughter he lost years before. Now, in defiance of all his hopes, Mary Lamb — herself an aspiring writer — is about to join him as the seventh member of the colony.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XU4TUO/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(One day, on the brink of despair and contemplating her ow...)
One day, on the brink of despair and contemplating her own mortality, novelist A. L. Kennedy is offered an assignment she can’t refuse – an opportunity to travel to Spain and cover a sport that represents the ultimate confrontation with death: bullfighting.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385720815/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(Hannah Luckraft sells cardboard boxes for a living. Her f...)
Hannah Luckraft sells cardboard boxes for a living. Her family is so frustrated by her behavior they can barely stand to keep in touch with her. Each day is fueled by the promise of annihilation, the promise of a reprieve, the paradise that can only be found in a bottle. When Hannah meets Robert, a kindred spirit, the two become constant companions. Together and alone Hannah and Robert spiral through the beauty and depravity of a love affair with alcohol. Paradise is a spectacular novel of desire and oblivion.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XUBF9C/?tag=2022091-20
2004
(Alfie Day, RAF airman and former World War II POW, never ...)
Alfie Day, RAF airman and former World War II POW, never expected to survive the war. Now, five years later and more alone than ever, Alfie finds himself drawn to unearth those strange, passionate days by working as an extra on a POW film. What he will discover on the set about himself, his loves and the world around him will make the war itself look simple. Funny and moving, wise and sad, Day is a truly original look at the intensity and courage to be found in the closeness of death, from one of Britain's most iconoclastic and highly acclaimed young writers.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030CMK9O/?tag=2022091-20
2007
(Always attuned to the moment of epiphany, these 12 storie...)
Always attuned to the moment of epiphany, these 12 stories are profound, intimate observations of men and women whose lives ache with possibility. Each story is a dramatisation of the instant in a life that exposes it all: love and the lack of love, hope and the lack of hope.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012HUEVL4/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(At the core of 'On Writing' is the hugely popular blog th...)
At the core of 'On Writing' is the hugely popular blog that A.L. Kennedy writes for the Guardian and we follow her during a 3-year period when she finished one collection of stories and started another, and wrote a novel in between. Readers and aspiring writers will have almost everything they need to know about the complexities of researching, writing and publishing fiction, but they will be receiving this wisdom conversationally, from one of the funniest and most alert of our contemporary authors.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0224096974/?tag=2022091-20
2013
(Something distinctly odd is going on in Arbroath. It coul...)
Something distinctly odd is going on in Arbroath. It could be to do with golfers being dragged down into the bunkers at the Fetch Brothers’ Golf Spa Hotel, never to be seen again. It might be related to the strange twin grandchildren of the equally strange Mrs Fetch — owner of the hotel and fascinated with octopuses. It could be the fact that people in the surrounding area suddenly know what others are thinking, without anyone saying a word.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N8YEQGI/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(A good man in a bad world, Jon Sigurdsson is 59 and divor...)
A good man in a bad world, Jon Sigurdsson is 59 and divorced: a senior civil servant in Westminster who hates many of his colleagues and loathes his work for a government engaged in unmentionable acts. A man of conscience. Meg Williams is ‘a bankrupt accountant — two words you don’t want in the same sentence, or anywhere near your CV’. She’s 45 and shakily sober, living on Telegraph Hill, where she can see London unfurl below her. Somewhere out there is safety. Somewhere out there is Jon, pinballing around the city with a mobile phone and a letter-writing habit he can’t break. He’s a man on the brink, leaking government secrets and affection as he runs for his life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N03HFDQ/?tag=2022091-20
2016
(“Some time ago, perhaps before you were even born, a youn...)
“Some time ago, perhaps before you were even born, a young girl was walking in her garden. She may have been called Mary - that's what most of the stories say. Mary was a little bit taller than the other girls her age and had brownish crinkly hair. She was quite thin, because she didn't always have exactly enough to eat. She liked honey and whistling and the colour blue and finding out." This is the story of Mary, a young girl born in a beautiful city full of rose gardens and fluttering kites. When she is still very small, Mary meets Lanmo, a shining golden snake, who becomes her very best friend. The snake visits Mary many times, he sees her city change, become sadder as bombs drop and war creeps in. He sees Mary and her family leave their home, he sees her grow up and he sees her fall in love. But Lanmo knows that the day will come when he can no longer visit Mary, when his destiny will break them apart, and he wonders whether having a friend can possibly be worth the pain of knowing you will lose them.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/178689386X/?tag=2022091-20
2018
(Stella is one of a number of young prostitutes working fo...)
Stella is one of a number of young prostitutes working for the pimp Mr. Peters in London, having run away from her Glasgow home where she was sexually abused by her father, a stand-up comedian. She tries to get away from Peters and becomes involved with Eddie, a heroin addict, before taking her revenge on Peters and her father.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005KCB1/?tag=2022091-20
1997
Alison Kennedy was born on October 22, 1965 in Dundee, City of Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom. She is the daughter of Robert Alan Kennedy, a psychology lecturer, and Edwardene Mildred, a teacher. Her parents divorced in 1976.
Alison Kennedy attended High School of Dundee. In 1986 she received a Bachelor of Arts in theatre studies and drama with honors from the Warwick University.
Alison Louise Kennedy was a writer in residence for Hamilton and East Kilbride Social Work Department from 1989 to 1991. She has worked for the arts and special needs charity Project Ability since 1989, first as writer in residence from 1989 to 1995, then as editor of "Outside Lines" magazine.
From 1993 to 1995 Kennedy was an editor of "New Writing Scotland" and was a writer in residence at Copenhagen University in 1995. She reviews for "The Scotsman", the "Glasgow Herald" and the "Daily Telegraph" and has been a judge for both the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1996 and The Guardian First Book Award in 2001.
Alison wrote the screenplay to the film "Stella Does Tricks", released in 1998, and edited New Writing 9 in 2000 with John Fowles, published in the United Kingdom by Vintage in association with the British Council.
From 2000 to 2005 Kennedy worked as a columnist for "Guardian". From 2002 to 2007 she served as a creative writing lecturer at the St. Andrew's University. In 2007 Alison was appointed an associate professor of a creative writing at the Warwick University. In 2015 she wrote an episode for Doctor Who, entitled "The Drosten's Curse".
(A good man in a bad world, Jon Sigurdsson is 59 and divor...)
2016(Always attuned to the moment of epiphany, these 12 storie...)
2009(Emotionally numb, crippled with insomnia, and caught in a...)
1997(The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, released in 1943, is...)
1997(“Some time ago, perhaps before you were even born, a youn...)
2018(Alfie Day, RAF airman and former World War II POW, never ...)
2007(Exposing and exploring the sinuous undercurrents of viole...)
1994(One day, on the brink of despair and contemplating her ow...)
1999(The heroes and heroines of Night Geometry and the Garscad...)
1990(At the core of 'On Writing' is the hugely popular blog th...)
2013(Hannah Luckraft sells cardboard boxes for a living. Her f...)
2004(Something distinctly odd is going on in Arbroath. It coul...)
2015(Mary Margaret Hamilton was educated in Scotland. She was ...)
1993(From the prodigiously talented A. L. Kennedy comes a flam...)
1999(M. Jennifer Wilson is a mid-thirties radio announcer livi...)
1995(Stella is one of a number of young prostitutes working fo...)
1997