I did not imagine anyone reading my rambling, ranting stories. I was writing for myself, trying to shape my life outside my terrors and helplessness, to make it visible and real in a tangible way, in the way other people's seemed real -- the lives I had read about in books.

In 2007 Allison announced that Dorothy Allison was working on a new novel She Who to be publiDorothy Allisond by Riverhead Press. Harris told her to be "honest and fearless especially when writing about lesbianism". In the early 1980s Allison met Lorde at a poetry reading.

She has won a number of awards for her writing including several Lambda Literary Awards. Dorothy Allison (born April 11 1949) is an American writer speaker and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She is a self-identified lesbian femme.