Beloved lesbian feminist Dorothy Allison, the author of Bastard Out of California, has passed away at age 75. An obituary reports her passing was due to cancer.

Her work focused on queer and working-class Southern characters, and examined love between people. She was influenced by the feminist movement of the 1970s, working as an activist in Florida, New York City and Washington, D.C. 

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“Part of my role, as I saw it, was to be a kind of evangelical lesbian feminist, and to help develop a political analysis of this woman-hating society,” she famously wrote.

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After editing the feminist newspaper Amazing Grace while contributing writings to Quest, Out/Look, The Village Voice, and Conditions, she began to publish collections of poetry. Her first, Trash, was met with critical acclaim, being honored with two Lambda Literary Awards. She went on to write poetry, novels, and self-described “smut,” as well as founding the Lesbian Sex Mafia, which describes itself as “the oldest continuously running women’s BDSM support and education group in the country.”

She described her work with Conditions in some of her writings.

“Sitting on the floor at editorial meetings talking about writing and manuscripts and how women might work toward a more just and equitable world, I looked around and felt my heart thudding between my breasts,” she wrote. “I loved each and every one of us. I loved what we were trying to do even as we quibbled over line breaks in a poem or structure in an essay.”

She published the poetry collection The Women Who Hate Me in 1983, and then went on to publish Bastard Out of California in 1992, which received a National Book Award Nomination. This novel was later adapted into a television movie on Showtime. Her second novel, Cavedweller, was released in 1998 and became a TV movie in 2004.

Other works of hers include the 1994 essay collection Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, & Literature and the 1995 memoir Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.

In her writings, she was not afraid to tackle taboo subjects like sexual abuse or characters from marginalized communities.

Allison was born in 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina. She “had a difficult childhood marked by poverty and sexual, physical, and emotional abuse,” according to Sinister Wisdom. After receiving various scholarships, she got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees

She is survived by her son Wolf and many friends.

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