About Alison

Alison Owings had no idea what career path she wanted to take until she was 10. 

Although thrilled, during a 2nd grade class trip, to see a woman operating a pill packing machine, she eventually decided not to follow in that path, but instead to be a writer. (Example, “The Lost Puppy,” an unfinished work in pencil). As a teenager, Alison narrowed her scope to non-fiction, specifically journalism.

Nothing has changed.

True, she did and does make forays into fiction, among other alphabet-related endeavors. She wrote an incipiently best-selling novel: “The Home Rules,” unpublished, about conflicts between feminism and adultery. She writes short stories, too (some published), exploring the vagaries of human relationships. She sometimes writes songs, (“I’ve Got the Midnight to 8 a.m. Overnight Shift Blues,” “My Baby Likes the Floor,” both unpublished and uncovered). Her travels in Europe inspired her to write a satire, The Wander Woman’s Phrasebook / How to Meet or Avoid People in Three Romance Languages, now available as an e book.

She also wrote two extensive travel pieces, both unpublished. One (“Unprepared”) recounts a  dramatic and treacherous trek into the Himalayas for a Hindu ceremony. Another (“A Month in Germany”) reveals what happened behind the scenes during a research trip for her highly praised book “Frauen / German Women Recall the Third Reich.”

She will entertain serious publishing offers.  

Frauen set the stage for her next multi-year projects, all non-fiction journalistically inspired oral history-based books – and all aided and vetted by a women’s writing group she co-founded. At one point, they were asked to appear and answer question at a San Francisco library event.

(Pictured, l to r, Carol Field, Mary Felstiner, Jean McMann, Cyra McFadden, Whitney Chadwick, Diana Ketcham, Alison showing yellow legs, Annegret Ogden.)

The resultant books are “Hey, Waitress! The USA from the Other Side of the Tray,” “Indian Voices / Listening to Native Americans,” and most recently – to be published in September by Beacon Press – “Mayor of the Tenderloin / Del Seymour’s Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco.”

Their thematic commonality? An examination of stereotypes. The implied question: when you picture a German women of the Third Reich, or an American waitress, or a Native American, or a homeless person, do you feel the same way after reading these books? 

Alison grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and lives in northern California with her first husband, Jonathan Perdue. Her most famous ancestor is probably Samuel F. B. Morse. She appreciates their commonality as communicators.