Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel is a celebrated cartoonist and author of the long-running comic strip, “Dykes To Watch Out For.” Her groundbreaking graphic memoir, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” was awarded the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book.

A native of central Pennsylvania, Bechdel and her siblings grew up in a small town. Her parents both taught at the local high school and her father, the subject of her first memoir, was the town’s mortician. Bechdel attended Oberlin College, where she graduated with a B.A. in 1981.

“Dykes to Watch Out For” was published in 1983 and became a syndicated comic strip in 1985. With her signature subtle wit, Bechdel took on the complex and often stereotyped world of lesbian relationships through her comic alter ego, Mo. The strip has become a cult classic.

In the late 1990’s, Bechdel began work on her first graphic memoir about her family, “Fun Home.” The memoir focuses on her relationship with her father and his death. Time Magazine honored “Fun Home” as No. 1 of the 10 Best Books of 2006, calling it “a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.” The book won a Lambda Book Award, an Eisner Award and the 2006 Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award. It was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

“Dykes to Watch Out For” continued production for 25 years. In 2008, Bechdel suspended work on the award-winning comic strip to create a graphic memoir about relationships. The same year, Houghton Mifflin published a complete collection of her work, “The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For.”

Bechdel resides outside of Burlington, Vermont.

Bibliography

Bibliography

"Alison Bechdel Biography." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 13 June 2011.
Bechdel, Alison. "Dykes to Watch Out For." dykestowatchoutfor.com. 13 June 2011.
Garner, Dwight. "Stray Questions for: Alison Bechdel." NYTimes.com. 13 June 2011.
Zuarino, John. "An Interview with Alison Bechdel." Bookslut. 13 June 2011.

Websites

Collections

Dykes to Watch Out For (1986)
More Dykes to Watch Out For (1988)
New, Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For (1990)
Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel (1992)
Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For (1993)
Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For (1995)
Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For (1997)
The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For (1998)
Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out For (1998)
Post-Dykes to Watch Out For (2000)
Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life Forms to Watch Out For (2003)
Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For (2005)
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006)
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (2008)

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Icon Year

2011

Multimedia PDF

2011_LGBT_31BioPages 3.pdf