Allison, AKA Ping-pong Extraordinaire, completed her undergraduate work at Wheaton College, majoring in Sociology and English. She was born in Murfreesboro, TN, but in adulthood meandered up to Chicago, where she lived for six years and passed her time delivering babies.
She currently lives in Murfreesboro, which she proudly states “used to be the capital of Tennessee,” on a plot of ground measuring over an acre. She uses the space to raise “various vegetables, raspberries, peaches and a few pears – but no partridges.” She shares her abundant crops with “deer, fox, possums and tree rabbits” (your guess as to what those are, is as good as ours). She shares her home with cats and asks that we not hold that tidbit of information against her.
The Writing Track is her chosen path in the English program. She prefers to write creative nonfiction about gardening, birth, animals and “other filthy, wonderful things.” Lucille Clifton is her favorite anything, ever. But, she also enjoys reading Mary Oliver, Flannery O’Conner, William Faulkner, and Claude McKay among others.
Allison is currently a principal and teacher at a rural Rutherford County college-prep high school. She says she’s “very good at giving stern looks, infusing her voice with disappointment and humbling all the male students at ping-pong.” She enrolled at Belmont because “she enjoys stories, the hearing and telling of them, and one day hopes to obliterate the Oxford comma.”
Please join us in welcoming Allison to Belmont and the English Graduate Program!
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