Bio

Born next to a popcorn farm, Alison Stine comes from a long line of foragers and farmers. Her grandmother called her “the showgirl in the family.” A child actor, she began writing plays and music when she was in middle school in Ohio.

Her first novel Road Out of Winter won the Philip K. Dick Award. Her second novel Trashlands was long-listed for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and her most recent book, the YA novel Dust, was published by Wednesday Books (Macmillan) in December 2024, receiving the Gold Standard Selection from the Junior Library Guild.

Her next novel, The Raven Engagement, the first book in her YA fantasy series, is forthcoming from Wednesday Books (Macmillan).

A failed academic, she became a single mother while getting her PhD at Ohio University. “On Poverty,” her essay about working as an artist outside of the academy, went viral in 2016, launching her journalism career. She would go on to work as a freelance reporter for The New York Times, and the Staff Culture Writer at Salon. Her journalism has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Post, 100 Days in Appalachia, and more. Her creative writing has been published in The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Vogue, ELLE, VQR, Poetry, Longreads, and others.

Also the author of three poetry collections published on university presses and a novella, Alison’s original musicals and plays have been produced at community and regional theaters, and Off-Broadway. She was a finalist in Cord Jefferson’s TV writing fellowship, the Susan M. Haas Fellowship.

Recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Ohio Arts Council, Alison was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Ruth Lilly Fellow from the Poetry Foundation. She and her son currently live in Cleveland, Ohio.