Alison Baker

Alison Baker is a writer of short stories, essays, and other things. Her two collections of fiction, How I Came West, and Why I Stayed, and Loving Wanda Beaver, were both named New York Time Notable Book of the Year.

Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Orion Nature Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, ZYZZYVA, Shenandoah, and other magazines. She has received several O. Henry Awards (including First Prize) and was a finalist with the Atlantic for the National Magazine Award. Her work has been recognized in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and numerous anthologies, and her stories have been read at Symphony Space and adapted for the stage in Seattle, San Francisco, and Tacoma Park, Maryland.

Her work has been translated into Japanese and made into a film starring Allison Janney.

A former medical librarian, she has been a library activist and was named Oregon Library Supporter of the Year in 2001.

She and her husband, Hans Rilling, live on Cape Cod, where she promotes native plants and the lives of diamondback terrapins.