A long-overdue Bent Alaska update — October 2013

Alison Bechdel, cartoonist (LGBT History Month 2011)

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. Bent Alaska presents her story as part of our celebration of LGBT History Month 2011, with thanks to the Equality Forum.

Alison Bechdel

“The [comic] strip is about all kinds of things, not just gay and lesbian issues—births, deaths and everything in-between happen to everyone.”

Alison Bechdel (b. September 10, 1960) 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.

Alison Bechdel was interviewed by MiND TV about her bestselling graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Watch:

For more about Alison Bechdel, visit the Dykes to Watch Out For website, the Alison Bechdel page on Amazon.com, her LGBT History Month page, or the Wikipedia article about her.

Photo credit: Alison Bechdel came to Brussels to promote her new autobiographical book Fun Home. She signed her book in the comic store Brüselm 29 Oct 2006. Photo by Tineke on Flickr; used in accordance with Creative Commons license.