A Lot About Me

Statement

I am a creative nonfiction writer who tells relentlessly true stories about my life and my family. I write personal narrative. Alison Failure, my work-in-progress, is a full-length memoir about my own mental illness and search for how other women in my family lived with mental illness.

It is very important to me to show how the past affects the present in my work. Part of this is excavation of primary sources. It’s key to me to know the past through evidence and not merely mythology.

Bio:

Alison Bergblom Johnson tells relentlessly true stories. Her nonfiction has been in Diverse Voices Quarterly, Burly Bird and Fiction Fix. Spout Press has published her fiction in Blink, an anthology of short shorts. The Minneapolis Star Tribune described that anthology as “some of Minnesota’s best writers at their briefest.” She’s read her work in some pretty cool places such as the Walker Art Center and 7th Street Entry of First Avenue. She has done residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, and supported by a fellowship from the Jerome Foundation at the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center. She’s currently working on finishing up her memoir Alison Failure tracing mental illness in her women relatives back to the early part of the 20th Century.

Memoir

The CNF issue of Fiction Fix is out. Here’s Dinty W. Moore’s review. My piece She Can Have This Calf appears in this issue. It’s available as a free download so be sure to grab a copy.

Another piece of creative nonfiction called Funny Girl in the ER has been published by Diverse Voices Quarterly. Here’s the free pdf to issue 8.

Performance

My one-woman show Other Than Tragedy premiered August of 2010 at the Minnesota Fringe Festival.

Teaching

In the Face of Obstacles appears in Recovering the Self in the July 2011 issue. This piece is a meditation on Martha Graham’s This I Believe piece.

For more info on the online class Writing Mental Illness, please visit my course page.

Please note however that the course Writing Mental Illness is on hiatus. The class should be back in a few months. Check back for details, or sign up for my newsletter, and check teaching.