You could have been a narrator who left much of how you now perceive the past up to the readers just told your story and got out of there. Not just because I felt compelled, after sitting in on your wonderfully stirring talk during this year’s New School Summer Writing Conference, to give your writing a renewed appreciation, but also because as the narrator of this story, you leave no worthy feeling or motive of a character un-exhumed unacknowledged. Witiuk, had the following conversation with Alysia Abbott via e-mail.ĪW: I must confess that it wasn’t easy coming up with questions for you, specifically concerning Fairyland. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family, where she co-created and runs the website, “a storytelling site and community for the many children and families left behind by parents who died of AIDS.”ġ2th Street ‘s Poetry and Online editor, Anna J. She grew up in San Francisco, and received her MFA in writing from the New School Writing Program. Abbott has been published in The New York Times, Slate, and, among other publications.

It is a beautifully-written testament of a time and culture swiftly being forgotten.įairyland was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choic e and an ALA Stonewall Award winner. Expertly braiding her memories of growing up with her gay father in 1970s San Francisco, with their parallel social and political markers, Abbott’s Fairyland is for creative readers and history enthusiasts alike. The tender-rooted honesty in Alysia Abbott’s Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, is of refreshing minority compared to the often fast and exploitative writing currently in the genre.

Fairyland by Alysia Abbott