The life and art of Alison Bechdel

Cartoonist and writer Alison Bechdel, presenting her life and work as a cartoonist and writer. 

Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For has become a countercultural institution among lesbians and discerning non-lesbians all over the planet. And her more recent, darkly humorous graphic memoirs about her family have forged an unlikely intimacy with an even wider range of readers.

Bechdel self-syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For for twenty-five years, from 1983 to 2008. The award-winning generational chronicle has been called “one of the pre-eminent oeuvres in the comics genre, period.” (Ms. magazine)

In 2006 she published “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.” Time magazine named it the Best Book of 2006, describing the tightly architected investigation into her closeted bisexual father’s suicide “a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.” “Fun Home” was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. It has been adapted into a musical by the playwright Lisa Kron and the composer Jeanine Tesori. It opened Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in September 2013 and ran through several extensions. A Broadway transfer is being planned for 2015, but has not been finalized.