About Alley
My name is Alison—but everyone calls me Alley.
I never thought I’d leave New York City. When the pandemic hit, I joined the mass exodus out of town to Connecticut. Big mistake. I referred to my isolated new home as the pandemic house. It was on a cul-de-sac, for God’s sake. Time to leave—this time, even farther away, to Vermont. But in my heart, I will always be a New Yorker.
I started and stopped a memoir about growing up in the city in the 1960s and ’70s, when everything changed. Many of the stories live in the shadow of my mother, a successful advertising executive who also wrote a best-selling novel.
She was the writer in the family; I was the artist. Until I took some classes, got better, and crossed the line and writing became my full-time job.
Most recently, I took a break from memoir to write a murder mystery set at a private school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s been a fun, cathartic detour inspired by my years as a Dean of Students—minus the murder.
