News and Offerings

My dad and I did a whole spate of interviews during book launch week (thanks to my dynamite publicist at Random House). Here is a piece from the Toronto Star, as well as the profiles that appeared in the Globe and Mail and the National Post.

Stratford was home to the premiere of the new, expanded version of the Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter one-woman show. I did two performances as part of the wonderful SpringWorks Festival. Here’s what the local paper had to say: http://www.stratfordbeaconherald.com/2013/05/18/growing-up-with-a-gay-dad-makes-for-a-great-one-woman-show

My dad is particularly proud of this interview on Global TV. When my brother saw it, he commented: “It’s great, Dad, but why do you keep bringing Alison along on all your interviews?”

Together, my dad and I have talked to Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, CTV, Global, and next week we have the pleasure of talking to Shelagh Rogers. Then, as my dad says, “our fifteen minutes of fame will be up and we can go back to normal life.” For me, that will mean five months of touring and performing. For my dad it means playing the piano, swimming, gardening and socializing. Plenty of socializing.

It’s been fun while it’s lasted. And I think we’ve both enjoyed the interviews far more than we were expecting to. An odd sort of father-daughter adventure, perhaps, but a very memorable one.

I bought my dad a pair of red leather shoes as a book launch gift and he wore them to our first joint interview on Canada AM. “I wonder how those shoes are going to look on television,” I said as we were heading out the door.” “What?” he replied. “ Canada AM is a TELEVISION program?

Here is a piece, entitled “Didn’t Everyone’s Dad Bake Croissants?”, in Maclean’s magazine. A few of the details are a bit inaccurate: a friend of mine called having a gay dad “a great party trick”; I’ve performed the show in Mexico and Canada, not “all over the world.” But it’s a kind treatment, and I appreciate that. The only thing my dad objected to was being referred to as being “in his late seventies”.

But Dad, you are 77…

The book comes out [ha ha] on Tuesday.

Wondering what this one-woman show shtick is all about? Here are a few words from some people I’ve been lucky enough to have in the audience.

Huge thanks to Chantelle Oliver and Citlalli Peña for assembling it.

This is a glimpse of the contents of the box my dad gave me midway through the writing of Confessions. The box had sat unopened in his basement for more than 30 years and was a writer’s dream: The Mythical Box, the one containing all the priceless original documents, the diaries, the letters, clues and confessions. Everything necessary to inspire a literary portrait. Or, in this case, to finish one.

To see more photos, please visit my blog.

“This exquisitely written and deeply compassionate memoir tells the story of a family and a nation at a turning point in their sexual and political awakening. The scope of events and emotions may be operatic, but Wearing captures them all in details that are intimate yet revealing, heartbreaking yet joyous. This is a book for every daughter who loves her father and for everyone who chooses to live (and love) openly and freely.”

— Kamal Al-Solaylee, author of Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes and National Theatre Critic for The Globe and Mail

“Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter had me in tears: first of laughter, then of sadness, then of wonder at life’s strange and marvelous fragility. It is a book both beautiful and true; about the longing for family and for home. Alison Wearing is a hugely talented writer.”
— Alison Pick, author of the Man Booker prize-nominated Far to Go

“With great skill and tenderness and a gorgeously wicked sense of humor, Wearing tells her family’s story from every angle, allowing all to speak with their own voices. This is an important historical document — a portrait of gay life in the 1980s with its bravely-fought battles for equality — that doesn’t flinch from showing the collateral damage of homophobia, which still today affects and afflicts the families of so many who are struggling to come out. But it’s also a timeless memoir written by a loving daughter who is finding her own way in the world and learning about the need we all have not just for acceptance, but for true understanding.”
— Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club

“Alison Wearing is blessed with the eye of a lyric poet, the ear of a comic novelist, and a heart capacious enough to tell a complicated love story. Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter caught me from the beginning and held me until its touching conclusion.”

— Katherine Ashenburg, author of The Dirt on Clean and The Mourner’s Dance

“Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is a universally appealing memoir about everything that matters in a family and to a person. It will appeal to you if you have a gay parent or a straight parent or any parent. If you have a child or were once a child. If you are passionately interested in social history or all you really want is a compelling, beautifully-written story with just the right mix of everything — compassion, discovery, recovery, the occasional (OK, on one occasion) accidental ingestion of hallucinogens on Christmas Day, music, humour and grace.”

— Jamie Zeppa, author of Every Time We Say Goodbye and Beyond the Earth and the Sky

“Part memoir, part history book, part diary and all parts heart. Alison Wearing weaves a tale that celebrates the complexities of who we are and the families we hold close. Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is painful, tender, poignant and – most important – beautifully honest.”

— Brian Francis, author of Natural Order and Fruit