Alexandra Fuller

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Not to be confused with Alexandra Fuller (squash player).

Alexandra Fuller
Alexandra fuller 2008.jpg
Born1969
Glossop, Derbyshire, England
OccupationAuthor
NationalityUnited Kingdom
Zimbabwe
United States
Notable awards2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize
2002 Booksense best non-fiction book
2004 Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage
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Alexandra Fuller on Bookbits radio.

Alexandra Fuller (born in 1969[1] in Glossop, England) is a British-Rhodesian author. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Granta, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times.

Personal life[]

In 1972 Fuller moved with her family to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) living in Wyoming. 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 have three children. She currently spends much of her time in a yurt near Jackson, Wyoming.[2]

Books[]

Her first book -- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight -- (published in 2001; a memoir of life with her family living in southern Africa) 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.[3] Her second book -- Scribbling the Cat (published in 2004 about war's repercussions) received the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005.[4]

In Fuller's third book, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant (2008), she 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.[5] A second memoir, Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness (2011), is about her mother, Nicola Fuller.[6] 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, on 27 June 2017.[7]

Education[]

Fuller received a B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada.[8] In 2007 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the same institution.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight[]

Main article: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

The 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 recalls comic stories about her mother getting drunk at dinner and staying up all night, but does not hide the effect her mother's alcoholism had on her childhood. 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[]

  • 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[9]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ "Alexandra Fuller | Penguin Random House". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
  2. ^ Green, Penelope (17 December 2014). "Square Peg in a Round House". The New York Times.
  3. ^ "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight - Pan Macmillan AU". Pan Macmillan Australia. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
  4. ^ "Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage". /www.lettre-ulysses-award.org.
  5. ^ Burrough, Bryan (8 June 2008). "Death in Wyoming". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
  6. ^ Kakutani, Michiko (22 August 2011). "A Mother's Long Love Affair With Colonialism". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
  7. ^ Fabrizio, Doug (6 July 2017). "A Conversation with Alexandra Fuller". The Vineyard Gazette. Retrieved 14 December 2017.
  8. ^ "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (Fuller) - LitLovers". www.litlovers.com. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
  9. ^ "Review: Leaving Before the Rains Come, by Alexandra Fuller". The Irish Times. Retrieved 15 August 2019.

External links[]

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