Dorothy Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and makes her home in Northern California. Her first novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Allison’s second novel, Cavedweller, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, won the 1998 Lambda Literary Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the Lillian Smith Prize.  Trash, published by Penguin Plume in the fall of 2002, included “Compassion” which appeared in both The Best American Short Stories: 2003 and The Best of the South: 2003.  She is currently working on another novel, She Who.  Allison will be in residence at Davidson College in 2009.