Alison Wearing is both a bestselling author and a multiple award-winning writer/performer of original solo plays.
She is also the editor/publisher of The Amy Award Anthology.
To learn more about each book/play, please click on the corresponding photo below.
BOOKS
Moments of Glad Grace is a moving and witty memoir of aging, familial love, and the hunt for roots and belonging. It is also a song of appreciation for the precious and limited time we have with our parents, the small moments we share, and the gifts of transcendence we might find there.
"This is a wise, funny, and tender book, beautifully written and perfectly executed from first to last sentence. It's about a daughter and her ageing father, it's about genealogy and identity, it's about Ireland, but actually it's about how we love the ones we love. Moments of Glad Grace is a travelogue of the heart. It's a road you'll want to travel."
~ Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi
“Like a well-cut diamond, and life itself, this book has many facets that glitter, and sparkle, and illuminate in countless captivating ways. Thoughtfully-organized, perceptive, witty and tender, leavened by humour, and exquisitely written, Moments of Glad Grace is as finely-honed a piece of work as I have read in a while.”~ The Ormsby Review
Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is a passionate memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, a tribute to the power of truth, humour, acceptance and familial love. Balancing intimacy, history and downright hilarity, this is a captivating tale of family life: deliciously imperfect, riotously challenging, and full of life’s great lessons in love.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction
FINALIST for the RBC/Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction
SELECTED as an Indigo ‘Top 50 Books of 2013’
“Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter is a book both beautiful and true; about the longing for family and for home. Alison Wearing is a hugely talented writer.”
~ Alison Pick, author of the Booker Prize-nominated Far to Go
With a novelist’s love of language and eye for dramatic detail, Wearing offers us startling glimpses into this enigmatic country and introduces us to people who welcome her, feed her and send her off on one adventure after another. Beautifully written, fresh and fascinating at every turn, Honeymoon in Purdah reveals an Iran rarely seen by Westerners.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Published in Canada, USA, UK, Germany, Spain, Portugal & Holland
“One of the best pieces of travel writing it has been my privilege to read in this, or any, millennium.”
~ Ottawa Citizen
“As a writer, Wearing is all luscious texture and running narrative…As with any good travel book, Honeymoon in Purdah is not a tour of monuments, but an exploration of a nation’s psyche, in this case a proud, generous and enduring one.” ~ The Globe and Mail
SOLO PLAYS
Based on the bestselling memoir, the Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter one-woman show tells the story of growing up with a gay father in the 1980s. With more than 150 performances in theatres and festivals around the world, the show has won top awards in virtually every festival in which it has appeared, including four Fringe Festival Best of Fest awards, the CBC’s Outstanding Solo Show award, and Best Dramatic Script at New York City's United Solo, the largest festival of solo theatre in the world.
★★★★★ “Uber-literate Alison Wearing holds the audience in the palm of her hand...Almost every sentence has a ticklish wordplay or phonic treat that makes listening a pleasure. Combined with her presence on stage, Confessions is great storytelling. Grab your tickets early; they’ll be in hot demand.” Winnipeg Free Press
Employing dazzling imagery, music, dance, percussive soundscapes and uproarious storytelling, this one-woman tour-de-force takes audiences to a magical village in central Mexico, a place where the everyday and the fantastical converge. By turns an evocative travelogue, a spoken-word extravaganza and a literary/musical journey, Giving Into Light is a woman’s search for light in a seemingly dark world. A riveting and ultimately transformative journey of love, acceptance and grace.
“There’s not a wrong note in this production. Alison is a masterful storyteller…Giving Into Light is a magical, musical expression of love.” Theatre in London
“This show is storytelling at its best. Wearing is a word perfect, engaging vision who paints with her body and her voice. Stringing together her life experiences like vibrant beads, the audience sees what she sees, smells what she smells and feels what she feels. Come and celebrate.” ~ View Magazine