Leaving Before the Rains Come (Fuller) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—March 29, 1969
• Where—Glossop, Derbyshire, UK
• Raised—Central Africa
• Education—B. A., Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Awards—Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize; Lettre Ulysses Award
• Currently—lives in Wilson, Wyoming


Alexandra Fuller is an author who was raised in Central Africa and currently lives in the U.S. state of Wyoming. She was born in the town of Glossop, England, but moved with her family to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in 1972 and was educated at boarding schools in Mutare and Harare.

Fuller received a B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada (receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the same institution in 2007). 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 but eventually divorced in 2012. They have three children. She currently spends much of her time in a yurt near Jackson, Wyoming.

Her first book, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, a memoir of her childhood in Africa, won the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. It 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. An unflinching account of the repercussions of the Rhodesian Bush War, it won the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005.

In her third book, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, Fuller narrates the tragically short life of a Wyoming roughneck who, in 2006, fell to his death at the age of 25. He was working on an oil rig owned by Patterson–UTI Energy.

Her second memoir (and fourth book), Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness, was published in 2011 and tells the story of her mother, Nicola Fuller.

Her 2015 memoir, Leaving Before the Rains Come, recounts the disintegration of her marriage.

Fuller's articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, National Geographic, Granta, New York Times, Guardian and Financial Times. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/26/2015.)