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Liz Allan

Biography

Liz Allan

Liz Allan’s fiction has won the Rachel Funari Prize and been shortlisted for the Alan Marshall Short Story Award, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize and the Overland Writers Residency, and longlisted for the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize. She is the author of the novel IN BLOOM and her short stories have appeared in Overland, Verge, Yen magazine, Aesthetica and Best Summer Stories 2018. She teaches at an all-girls school in the United Kingdom.

Liz Allan

Books by Liz Allan

In Bloom
by Liz Allan - Fiction

It’s the mid-90s, and in the small, shitty coastal town of Vincent, Australia, four Nirvana-obsessed 14-year-old girls form a grunge band. The Bastards are “forgettable girls” --- poor, not particularly clever, ridiculed by their better-off classmates and desperate to escape the fates of their mothers, who seem locked into a life of minimum-wage jobs, surprise pregnancies and drunk boyfriends. The Battle of the Bands is the girls’ one ticket out. As small-town rumors swirl, however, The Bastards are abandoned by their lead singer Lily Lucid, who accuses their beloved music teacher of assault. The three remaining girls are left with nothing. Nothing, that is, except their amateur detective skills, a conviction that Mr. P is innocent and a readiness to sacrifice everything to keep their dream alive. Spinning with rage at the confines of their lives, they reach a precipice where there’s no turning back.