Alison Bechdel Books In Order

Publication Order of Dykes to Watch Out For Books

Publication Order of Fun Home Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Children's Books

Publication Order of Graphic Novels

Publication Order of Alison Bechdel Humor & Entertainment Books

Publication Order of Interviews with Icons Books

Publication Order of Secret to Superhuman Strength Books

Publication Order of Conversations with Artists Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Alison Bechdel is a published American cartoonist, author, graphic novelist and artist.

Born on September 10, 1969 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, she is perhaps best known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. She would get even more recognition with the release of her graphic memoir Fun Home in 2006, which was adapted into a musical that would go on to win a Tony Award in 2015 for best musical.

She would release another graphic memoir titled Are You My Mother? In 2012. She also received the MacArthur Genius Award in 2014. She is the originator of the Bechdel test.

Alison came from a Roman Catholic family consisting of her mother Helen and her father Bruce. Her father was an army veteran and later an English teacher in high school while also running a funeral home part-time. Alison’s mother was a teacher and an actress. She also has two brothers, Bruce and John.

Alison decided to leave high school behind a year early. She attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock, graduating with her A.A. in 1979. She then attended Oberlin College, graduating with her degree in studio arts and art history. Her father passed in 1980 and her mother sold the house and moved. Bechdel herself relocated to Manhattan in 1981 during the summer, applying to and being rejected from several art schools. In the meantime, she worked in the publishing industry working office jobs.

Alison started her comic Dykes to Watch Out For with just a simple drawing. Her friend then recommended that she send her work on out to the feminist newspaper WomaNews, which released her work in an issue in June 1983. The author would evolve from single-panel to multi-panel strips and the strip became more popular after a year when more outlets began running it.

In beginning years, the comic was simply strips that were unconnected that did not have a regular cast or a story line that was serialized at all. The structure would then evolve into following an established group of characters (that were all lesbian). A collection of the strips published to date was released in 1986 from Firebrand Books.

She would introduce the regular characters of Mo in 1987 along with her friends. It is the origin of the Bechdel test, which started out as a joke but has become a metric used quite often when discussing film.

Alison would start a page-length strip in 1988 called Servants to the Cause for The Advocate that was short-lived. She has written and drawn autobiographical strips as well as illustrations for websites and magazines. Her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For did so well that in 1990 she could finally quit her day job to work on the strip on a full-time basis.

She was invited in 2006 to sit on the American Heritage Dictionary’s Usage Panel. She was also a Mellon Residential Fellow for Arts and Practice at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center at the University of Chicago in 2012. In 2017, she was picked to be Vermont’s third Cartoonist Laureate.

Bechdel lives in Bolton, Vermont. She also works with Seven Days, an alternative weekly based in Vermont.

The author is known for Fun Home, a Family Tragicomic. This is an autobiographical work that came out in 2006 that goes over her childhood as well as various years prior to her father’s suicide and following it. It also follows the phases of her relationships with her parents and focused on the difficulty that people often have coming out. The comic was on The New York Times Bestseller List for two weeks in the category of hardcover nonfiction.

It was picked as one of the best books of the year by different places, such as The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, New York magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Times of London, and more. It has been called one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by Time Magazine and was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle award in the category of memoir/autobiography.

Fun Home won the 2007 Eisner Award for the best reality-based work. It was also adapted into an Off-Broadway musical in 2013 with Jeanine Tesori writing the score and the book and lyrics written by Lisa Kron. They would win a Tony Award as the first all-woman team for best score. The musical closed in 2014 after extending its run several times. The Broadway musical would go on to get five Tony Awards and rights were secured to adapt the musical version of Fun Home into a film by Jake Gyllenhaal and his Nine Stories Productions banner.

Bechdel personally came out at the age of nineteen as a lesbian. She would marry Amy Rubin in February 2004 in a San Franciscan civil ceremony. Licenses distributed at that time were later voided by the California Supreme Court. The couple separated in 2006 and Alison then lived with Holly Rae Taylor, her painter partner for just over seven years before they were married in 2015.

She has won several awards during the course of her career, including the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award, was entered into the Women Cartoonists Hall of Fame in 2010, earned a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, won an Inkpot Award, won The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle, won the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education Distinguished Educator Award, won a Lambda Board of Trustees Award for excellence in literature, won an Erikson Institute Prize for excellence in mental health media, was a Harvey Awards Hall of Fame inductee in 2019, and won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2022.

Dykes to Watch Out For is the first book to come out featuring quite a bit of the comics in this series.

This is a collection that follows along with the main character Mo and Harriet and their many loves as they go through life and spend time with their trusty group of lesbian friends.

It is also an autobiographical account by Bechdel on how difficult it is to find a relationship that lasts. It is very interesting and so pick up a copy to dive into this vivid and interesting world!

More Dykes to Watch Out For brings more of the world of Mo and Harriet and all their friends and follows them in this innovative comic strip collection that will not fail to entertain. If you loved the first collection, be sure to check this one out too.