Hello one and all, my name is Alison Aston and I am a lesbian writer who lives in London with my singer/songwriter girlfriend, Tamar Zak-Collins

As things stand, I am enslaved to the corporate treadmill during the day and am Head of Advertising for a large publishing company, who, due to the separation of church and state and all that jazz, had better remain nameless!  Over the years however, my ad career has taken me to some of the most glamorous mags in the land from ELLE and Vogue to Harper's Bazaar.  More recently though, I spent five years mucking out cows and shearing sheep at the BBC in Bristol!

Despite being in the bizz as it were, I came to writing later than most and only started blogging about my lesbian life on myspace for a bit of giggle.  Randomly enough, my blatherings were enough to pick up quite the following and as a result, I was asked to freelance for Time Out among many other things.  I even got to interview cult lesbian band Uh Huh Her, featuring Leisha Hailey from The L Word - imagine the nervous rash, I think it went down as far as my knees!

Around that time, I started to work on my novel, Closet, which is very loosely based on my own coming out experience when working on one of the above style mags.  If I tell you which one, I'll have to shoot you obviously, so probably best not to ask.  People have compared my writing style to Augusten Burroughs who I think is a huge God, so I'm more than happy with that, but basically think Bridget Jones meets The Devil Wears Prada gone gay and you won't go far wrong!

After a bit of a lengthy hiatus due to the day job, I'm only just getting back on track and am starting to beaver away at the second draft, so watch this space... 

Click here to read an excerpt, or listen to a recording!

 

© Alison Aston 2010