Join the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture in Celebrating Dorothy Allison. We will have selected readings, reflections, and memories honoring the life and legacies of queer Southern writer Dorothy Allison. Speakers will include Mab Segrest, Laura Micham, Kelly Wooten, and others. Attendees are invited to share remembrances. Light refreshments will be served. Registration optional, but not required.

Please note room change to Rubenstein Library 249 (Carpenter Board Room), on the 2nd floor.

About Dorothy Allison:

Dorothy Allison (1949-2024) described herself as “a feminist, a working class story teller, a Southern expatriate, a sometime poet and a happily born-again Californian.” Allison was most widely known for her novel Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), and is remembered in queer and feminist communities for her groundbreaking contributions to LGBTQ literature and publishing.

In the early 1990s Ginny Daley, then director of the Sallie Bingham Center, started the conversation that lead to placing the Dorothy Allison Papers at Duke. “I saw her as the quintessential Southern writer,” Daley wrote. “Her personal papers and literary works fit well with Duke’s collections of Southern literature and women’s culture, while bringing fresh perspectives on queer culture and truth-telling to the mix.” This vision came to fruition in 2010.

At the time of the acquisition,  Allison, a South Carolina native living in California, stated, "Now I feel that all that I saved is going to be safe and of use. Since we are entering high summer here with 90 degree temperatures and high risk of fire, I can also stop worrying that a wildfire might sweep through the redwoods and erase all that history. Safe and of use is infinitely preferable.” We remain grateful to be the stewards of her papers as just one thread of her enormous legacy.