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Alysia Abbott is the author of Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and an ALA Stonewall Award winner, a winner of the Madame Figaro Prix Heroine, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. The book has since been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Portuguese. In 2022, she was awarded an artist grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. In 2023, the film Fairyland, based on her memoir and produced by Sofia Coppola, premiered at Sundance.

As a journalist, essayist, and critic, she has written for The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Vogue, Marie Claire, TheAtlantic.com, TriQuarterly and Psychology Today, among other publications.

Alysia holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from New School University and was a contributing producer at WNYC Radio. Alysia is also co-founder of The Recollectors Project, dedicated to remembering parents lost to AIDS and supporting the children they left behind. Formerly the instructor of GrubSreet’s Memoir Incubator Program, she currently teaches at MassArt and Emerson College. Alysia lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her family.

At MassArt, Alysia teaches Writing into the World, a new course in the Creative Writing Minor that invites students to widen their narrative lens to tell both personal stories and community stories.

Awards

Awards for Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father

• New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
• ALA Stonewall Award
• Madame Figaro Prix Heroine
• Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards

Artist grant award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Professional Affiliations

Co-founder of The Recollectors Project

Former Director of the Boston Literary District

Instructor at Grubstreet Center for Creative Writing