Alison Baker

Alison Baker is the author of two short story collections, LOVING WANDA BEAVER and HOW I CAME WEST, AND WHY I STAYED; each was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Awards for her fiction include several O. Henry Awards (including First Prize), the Gettysburg Review Award, and the George Garrett Award for Fiction; inclusion in Best of the West and New Stories From the South; National Magazine Awards Finalist; and citation in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Her work has been featured on Selected Shorts at New York’s Symphony Space and dramatized for stage in Seattle, San Francisco, and Takoma Park, Maryland. Rumor has it that one of her short stories has been made into a movie starring Allison Janney.

Her fiction, poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in such publications as Shenandoah, the Atlantic Monthly, Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, Orion Nature Quarterly, the Washington Post, ZYZZYVA, and numerous anthologies.

She has served on the advisory board of Writers@Work and the editorial board of Wabash Magazine. She has been a Ragdale Foundation resident and a Fellow at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

A graduate of Reed College and Indiana University School of Library and Information Science, she has worked as a medical librarian and a library activist. She was named 2001 Oregon Library Supporter of the Year by the Oregon Library Association.

She is secretary of the Upper James River Chapter of the Virginia Native Plants Society.

Alison Baker is a casual birder, a careless gardener, an impatient knitter and an indifferent photographer. She and her husband, Hans Rilling, live in Rockbridge County, Virginia.

Agent: Gail Hochman
Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc.
1501 Broadway, Suite 2310
New York, NY 10036

Phone: (212) 840-5760
Fax: (212) 840-5776