Alison Moore (writer)
Alison Moore is an English writer. Born in Manchester, she lives in Leicestershire. She is an honorary lecturer in the School of English at the University of Nottingham.
Work
Moore's 2012 debut novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. In reaction to the announcement, Moore commented: "Reaching the shortlist is ridiculously exciting. I keep feeling like I ought to stop daydreaming and get on with something, but it's all real." Chair of the Booker jury, Sir Peter Stothard, described the jury's decision in the following words: "The judges admired The Lighthouses bleak inner landscape, a temperature control set low and an impressively assured control." The Lighthouse went on to win the 2013 McKitterick Prize.Before The Lighthouse, Moore had written and published several short stories, including 'Static', shortlisted for the inaugural Manchester Fiction Prize, and 'When the Door Closed, It Was Dark', published as a chapbook by Nightjar Press and included in Best British Short Stories 2011. Much of this work is collected in The Pre-War House and Other Stories, whose title story won first prize in the novella category of the New Writer Prose and Poetry Prizes 2009.
Her second novel, He Wants, was published in 2014. Both The Lighthouse and He Wants were Observer Books of the Year. Her third novel, Death and the Seaside was published in 2016. In 2018, Moore published her fourth novel, Missing, and a chapter book for children, Sunny and the Ghosts, which became the first in a trilogy, illustrated by Ross Collins. A fifth novel The Retreat was published in 2021, followed in 2022 by a second collection, Eastmouth and Other Stories.