Alison Fell was born in Dumfries and educated there and at Edinburgh College of Art, before moving to London in 1970. She has published seven novels, including Mer de Glace, which won the Boardman Tasker Memorial Award. Her books of poetry are Kisses for Mayakovsky (Virago, 1984) which won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award, The Crystal Owl  (Methuen, 1988), Dreams, Like Heretics: new and selected poems (Serpent's Tail, 1997), and Lightyear (Smokestack Books, 2005), a collaboration with photographer Ivan Coleman.