Allison Field Bell is multi-genre writer originally from northern California but currently living in Salt Lake City, Utah. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University, and she is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Utah.
Allison is a Fiction Editor for The Rumpus and for Waxwing.
Allison’s debut poetry collection, All That Blue, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2026. She is also the author of two chapbooks, now available to order: Edge of the Sea (creative nonfiction, CutBank Books) and Without Woman or Body (poetry, Finishing Line Press). Her current projects-in-progress include a book of short fiction, a collection of nonfiction, and a novel.
Allison’s story collection-in-progress, Bodies of Other Women, was a runner-up for the 2024 Iron Horse / TTU Press First Book Prize. The book was also named a finalist for The Journal’s 2023 Non/Fiction Collection Prize, the Black Lawrence Press 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award, and the Texas Review Press 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize. Allison’s hybrid chapbook-in-progress, A is For, was a finalist for the 2023 NMP / DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest and her flash fiction chapbook Love Each Other More was a finalist for the 2024 Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Contest.
Allison’s flash piece, “Carve,” was awarded 3rd Prize in the 2023 Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction and also appears in Best Small Fictions 2024; her flash piece, “A Story You Know,” won Midway Journal’s 2023 ~1000 Below: Flash Prose and Poetry Contest, judged by Jennifer Tseng, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023, and made the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist 2024; her story, “Tangerine,” which appears in Ghost Parachute, also appears in Best Microfiction 2024, and was nominated for Best of the Net 2024, Best Small Fictions 2024, and a Pushcart Prize in 2023; her micro essay, “Girls Are Always” won Quarter After Eight’s 2021 Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, judged by David Haynes; and her essay, “The Body, The Onion: A Balagan,” which appears in Shenandoah, was a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2021.
Allison was a 2024 Anthony Veasna So Scholar for Adroit Journal and a 2024 residency winner for the Writing by Writers Santa Fe Residency. She is a recipient of the Steffensen Cannon Graduate Fellowship (2023-2024 & 2024-2025), and she was awarded New Mexico State University’s Mercedes Delos Jacobs Book Prize in Fiction for her story collection, judged by Kevin McIlvoy, 2017; the Efroymson Scholarship in Creative Writing at Butler University, 2013-2014; and the Frederick and Frances Sommer Arts and Letters Fellowship at Prescott College, 2010-2011