Allison Field Bell is a writer, teacher, and student originally from northern California but currently living in Salt Lake City, Utah. She received her MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University in 2017, and she is a PhD candidate in Prose at the University of Utah. She is a Fiction Editor and the Social Media Editor for Waxwing, the Social Media Editor for Quarterly West, and a Book Contest Reader for Fiction Collective 2. Her current projects-in-progress include a book of fiction, Bodies of Other Women, a collection of flash nonfiction, Harlan: A Letter in Essays, and a collection of poetry, Some Other Body. She is also at work on a new novel with the working title, There is the Day.
Allison’s collection-in-progress, Bodies of Other Women, was a runner-up for the 2024 Iron Horse / TTU Press First Book Prize. The book was also named a finalist for The Journal’s 2023 Non/Fiction Collection Prize, the Black Lawrence Press 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award, and the Texas Review Press 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize, and it was recognized as a semi-finalist for the 2023 Orison Prize in Fiction, the Black Lawrence Press 2023 Hudson Prize, and the 2023 Iron Horse / TTU Press First Book Prize. Allison’s hybrid chapbook-in-progress, A is For, was a finalist for the 2023 NMP / DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest and her essay collection-in-progress, Harlan: A Letter in Essays, was named a semi-finalist for The Journal’s 2023 Non/Fiction Collection Prize.
Allison’s flash piece, “Carve,” was awarded 3rd Prize in the 2023 Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction and is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2024; her flash piece, “A Story You Know,” won Midway Journal’s 2023 ~1000 Below: Flash Prose and Poetry Contest, judged by Jennifer Tseng and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023; her story, “Tangerine,” which appears in Ghost Parachute, is also forthcoming in Best Microfiction 2024, and was nominated for Best of the Net 2024, Best Small Fictions 2024, and a Pushcart Prize in 2023; her story, “Declawed,” which appears in Flash Frog and her essay, “Rectangle,” which appears in Post Road were both nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2023; her micro essay, “Girls Are Always” won Quarter After Eight’s 2021 Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, judged by David Haynes; her story, “Of the Eating Variety,” which appeared in Ruminate, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021; and her essay, “The Body, The Onion: A Balagan,” which originally appeared in Shenandoah, was a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2021.
Allison is a 2024 Anthony Veasna So Scholar for Adroit Journal and a 2024 residency winner for the Writing by Writers Santa Fe Residency. She is a recipient of the 2023-2024 and the 2024-2025 Steffenson Cannon Graduate Fellowship. She was awarded New Mexico State University’s Mercedes Delos Jacobs Book Prize in Fiction for her story collection, Be a Woman, judged by Kevin McIlvoy, 2017; the Efroymson Scholarship in Creative Writing at Butler University, 2013-2014; and the Frederick and Frances Sommer Arts and Letters Fellowship at Prescott College, 2010-2011