Alison Owings is the author, most recently, of HEY, WAITRESS! THE USA FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRAY.
Her previous work -- named a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year" -- is FRAUEN / GERMAN WOMEN RECALL THE THIRD REICH.
Both are in print, and frequently used in university courses.
For the last several years, she has been researching and writing another anti-stereotype oral history-based book, whose working title is LISTENING TO NATIVE AMERICANS. It is a survey of what a wide variety of Native people have to say about contemporary life, and say with passion and humor.
People interviewed thus far include members of the following tribal nations: Hopi, Kiowa, Lakota, Navajo, Ojibwe, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Yakama, and Yupik.
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Alison Owings, the daughter of Kenneth Brown Owings and Alice Case Roberts Owings, grew up in East Orange and Chatham, New Jersey and Strafford, Pennsylvania, was graduated from the American University in Washington, DC with a degree in journalism, and attended Freiburg University in Germany. She is fluent in German, but the rrrr still gives her trouble.
She worked for several years as a writer in television news, most memorably for CBS TV in New York.
While in Washington, she founded "Don't Tear It Down," an organization aimed at saving old buildings -- large and small -- and neighborhoods. Its best-known success was saving The Old Post Office Building. The organization's name was later changed to the DC Preservation League.
Owings is also the author of a travelogue parody, THE WANDER WOMAN'S PHRASEBOOK / HOW TO MEET OR AVOID PEOPLE IN THREE ROMANCE LANGUAGES. (She has boxes of them. Make an offer.)
She lives in California with her first husband.
