Alexandra Fuller (born 1969[1]) is a British-Zimbabwean author. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Granta, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times.[citation needed]
Alexandra Fuller | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1969 Glossop, Derbyshire, England |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | British Zimbabwean American |
| Notable awards | 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize 2002 Booksense best non-fiction book 2004 Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage |
Personal life
editIn 1972 Fuller moved with her family to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She was educated at boarding schools in Umtali and Salisbury (renamed Harare after 1982). She met her American husband, Charlie Ross, in Zambia, where he was running a rafting business for tourists. In 1994, they moved to his home state of Wyoming. Fuller and Ross divorced in 2012. They had two daughters and one son together.[2] Their son, Fi, died in his sleep at the age of 21.[2] She currently spends much of her time in a yurt near Jackson, Wyoming.[3]
Books
editHer first book, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, published in 2001, is a memoir of life with her family living in southern Africa. It won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 2002. In the same year it was featured in The New York Times list of "Notable Books" and a finalist for The Guardian's First Book Award.[4] A sequel, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness about her mother, Nicola Fuller, was published in 2011.[5]
Her 2004 book Scribbling the Cat, about war's repercussions, received the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005.[6]
In her book The Legend of Colton H. Bryant (2008) Fuller narrates the short life of a Wyoming roughneck who fell to his death at age 25 in February 2006 on an oil rig owned by Patterson–UTI Energy.[7]
The autobiographical Leaving Before the Rains Come, published in January 2015, is about the disintegration of Fuller's marriage.
Fuller published her first novel, Quiet Until the Thaw, in 2017.[8]
In 2019 she published Travel Light, Move Fast about the death of her father and son.
In 2024 she published Fi: A Memoir of My Son, centres on her grief from losing her adult son.[2]
Education
editFuller received a B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada.[9] In 2007 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the same institution.[citation needed]
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
editThe memoir follows Fuller, called Bobo by her family, and her sister and parents as they move from England to Rhodesia and other points in Central Africa. The book mainly focuses on stories of family life while moving around Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia. The Rhodesian Bush War, or Second Chimurenga, serves as a backdrop to the family's time in Rhodesia. After the Rhodesian Bush War, the Fullers move to Malawi and then Zambia.
Fuller does not hide the effect her mother's alcoholism had on her childhood and is frank about her father's casual racism. Fuller writes about living through a war, being white while growing up in an almost all-black country, and the death of siblings and beloved animals.
Works
edit- Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Waterville, Me.: Thorndike 2011. ISBN 9781410439413, OCLC 773423489
- Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier, London: Picador, 2004. ISBN 9781447262534, OCLC 862092268
- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: an African childhood, London: Picador, 2015. ISBN 9781447275084, OCLC 902723457
- Leaving Before the Rains Come. ULVERSCROFT, 2017. ISBN 9781785413049, OCLC 983282940[10]
- Fuller, Alexandra (9 April 2024). Fi: A Memoir of My Son. Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-8021-6104-8.[11][12]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Alexandra Fuller | Penguin Random House". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
- ^ a b c Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller review – to the edge of reason The Guardian. 18 July 2024
- ^ Green, Penelope (17 December 2014). "Square Peg in a Round House". The New York Times.
- ^ "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight - Pan Macmillan AU". Pan Macmillan Australia. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (22 August 2011). "A Mother's Long Love Affair With Colonialism". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
- ^ "Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage". /www.lettre-ulysses-award.org. Archived from the original on 8 January 2006.
- ^ Burrough, Bryan (8 June 2008). "Death in Wyoming". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
- ^ Fabrizio, Doug (6 July 2017). "A Conversation with Alexandra Fuller". The Vineyard Gazette. Retrieved 14 December 2017.
- ^ "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (Fuller) - LitLovers". www.litlovers.com. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
- ^ "Review: Leaving Before the Rains Come, by Alexandra Fuller". The Irish Times. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
- ^ Sheff, David (6 April 2024). "A Mother's Devastating Memoir of Losing Her Adult Son". New York Times.
- ^ Winik, Marion. "Alexandra Fuller's new book is not your typical grief memoir". Washington Post www.msn.com. Retrieved 16 April 2024.
External links
edit
- Official Website Archived 4 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine
- Powells.com Author interview
- Sketchy biography as winner of the Lettre Ulysses Award
- "Utopia on the Range" – New York Times article on Hell's Backbone Grill by Fuller.
- Appearances on C-SPAN