Alexandra Fuller

Biography

Fuller was born in the town of Glossop, England but moved with her family to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1972 and was educated at boarding schools in Mutare and Harare. Her first book was 2001's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, a memoir of life with her family living in southern Africa. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 2002, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and a finalist for The Guardian's First Book Award. Scribbling the Cat, her second book, was released in 2004. It is an unflinching tale of war's repercussions. It won the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005.

In Fuller's third book, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant (2008), she narrates the tragically short life of a Wyoming roughneck who fell to his death at age 25 in February 2006 on an oil rig owned by Patterson–UTI Energy. A second memoir, Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness (2011), is about her mother, Nicola Fuller. AudioFile magazine called Cocktail Hour "ambitious" and "rambling and lively book", and praised audiobook performer Bianca Amato's narration.

Leaving Before the Rains Come, published in January 2015, is about the disintegration of Fuller's marriage.

Fuller's articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, National Geographic, Granta, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times.

Fuller received a B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. In 2007 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the same institution. She met her American husband, Charlie Ross, in Zambia, where he was running a rafting business for tourists. In 1994, they moved to his home state of Wyoming. Fuller and Ross divorced in 2012. They have three children. She currently spends much of her time in a yurt near Jackson, Wyoming.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

The memoir follows Fuller, called Bobo by her family, and her sister and parents as they move from England to Rhodesia and other points in Central Africa. The book mainly focuses on stories of family life while moving around Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia. The Rhodesian Bush War, or Second Chimurenga, serves as a backdrop to the family's time in Rhodesia. After the Rhodesian Bush War, the Fullers move to Malawi and then Zambia.

Fuller recalls comic stories about her mother getting drunk at dinner and staying up all night, but does not hide the effect her mother's alcoholism had on her childhood. Fuller writes about living through a war, being white while growing up in an almost all-black country, and the death of siblings and beloved animals.