SOURCE: “Moving toward Truth: An Interview with Dorothy Allison,” in Kenyon Review, Vol. 16, No. 4, Fall, 1994, pp. 71–83.

In the following interview, Allison and Megan discuss Allison's past and the parallels between her life and works.

In March 1993 Dorothy Allison's novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, nominated for the 1992 National Book Award, had just been published in paperback, and she was at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a reading tour. She answered the door to her posh suite dressed in T-shirt and jeans saying, “Look at this place! Grace Paley stayed in this room!” Readers were lining up in city after city to hear her read, but she was still becoming accustomed to her fame.

Her work includes collections of poems, The Women Who Hate Me; stories, Trash; and essays, Skin. A novel, Cavedweller, will be published in 1995. She lives in northern California with her companion, Alix, and their...