Looking at Her Life 

 Alison Bechdel was born in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania on September 10, 1960 to Helen and Bruce Bechdel, who were both High School English teachers. Her family also ran the local funeral home which had been in their family for decades. Alison is the oldest of the three Bechdel children. Her brothers Christian and John play pivotal roles in both the graphic novel and musical Fun Home. Alison was encouraged by her parents to draw from an early age, particularly her father who, as stated in an interview by Bechdel, "...would bring me big stacks of typing paper, and I'd fill them up with 60 or 70 pages of my cartoon stories."  

             

 Alison graduated early from high school and went on to junior college, and then transferred to Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. She graduated with a degree in both Art Graphics and Art History. During her junior year at Oberlin, she came out as a lesbian at the age of 19. Alison is repeatedly quoted as that being the most important thing she accomplished in college, and according to Alison, her father consequentially committed alleged suicide only four months after her coming out in July 1980. His funeral took place at the same funeral home that he owned. 

               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After graduating from college, Alison moved to New York City and after failing to get accepted into multiple art schools, she began working what she describes as essentially grunt work in the publishing world. Alison started volunteering at a feminist newspaper called WomaNews, and it was around this time that her cartoon Dykes to Watch Out For was born in the margins of a letter to one of her friends. From there, Alison began to draw strips of "... these whacked out lesbians" and eventually her co-workers convinced her to submit some into WomaNews. 

 

In 1983, in the lesbian pride edition of the newspaper, Alison's first cartoons were published. Bechdel's comic strip rapidly caught fire and by 1986, she had published her first volume of cartoons under an independent publishing company owned by a fan. Dykes to Watch Out For has since had multiple other collections published such as: More Dykes to Watch Out For (1988), New Improved Dykes to Watch Out For (1990), Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel (1992), Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For (1993), and Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For (1995) just to name a few. During this time, Alison was gaining respect and popularity from both her critics and her peers alike. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While writing her comic, Alison accidentally created one of the longest-lasting and most famous aspects of her career, “The Bechdel Test.” From then on, this test has been used across all genres of films to see if it passes three very simple, yet not always achievable characteristics. This test has taken on a life of its own, and is now academically referenced when discussing film, feminism and fair pay in the movie industry as a whole.  

 

Alison has won several awards and esteemed accolades throughout the years. She was awarded the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle. Alison was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2014, which is lauded as one of the most esteemed awards any intellectual can achieve, and is nicknamed the "Genius Grant." In 2015, she was awarded the Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. Her novel Fun Home spent two weeks at the top of the New York Times hardcover Nonfiction bestsellers list. 

 

Alison's personal life is relatively calm, seeing as she is a working author. Her first marriage was dissolved as a result of Proposition 8 in California, and her and her partner broke up in 2006. Bechdel is now married to Holly Rae Taylor and lives in Bolton, Vermont.