Alison Langley hates being asked where she is from. So far she’s lived in sixteen cities and towns in five countries. That doesn’t count Colorado, where she spent summers and Christmases. Or her extended stays in London and Surrey. Nor has she yet to settle down.

She was born in Missouri where her parents, both native Coloradans, paused briefly before finally settling in Minnesota. There she spent long winters reading the entire inventory of the Long Lake library. In high school, Alison declared her ambition to write the definitive American novel to anyone brave enough to ask what she wanted to do in life.

Yet, after graduating from what she now realizes was quaintly called The U, Alison and a friend hopped into a VW Rabbit and headed east. They stopped in Connecticut where they both landed jobs as reporters at the Norwich Bulletin. Later, Alison thought she was advancing in the world with a position at the Baltimore News American, only to encounter the harsh realities of corporate ownership. Less than two years later, the Hearst Corporation folded the nation’s oldest continuously published paper due to its prime Inner Harbor location.

In pursuit of her dream to be a foreign correspondent, Alison took the meager severance pay, sold all her worldly possessions and flew to Germany. There, she eventually landed a job with Dow Jones, owners of two financial wire services and one prestigious paper, the Wall Street Journal. Though wholly unqualified for a job in financial journalism, Alison managed to transfer from Frankfurt to Zurich, becoming the first woman to work in the Swiss office.

In Zurich, she kept such a close eye on the competition, a Reuters journalist, that they married. A year later, when the biggest story of their lifetime blew up – the fall of the Iron Curtain – Alison was in the delivery room of the University of Zurich Hospital. Not to miss out on these historic changes, the family moved to Budapest in 1990, where Alison attempted to raise a family, learn Hungarian and freelance for the Journal. Through a series of miscommunication she wound up organizing training for nurses on behalf of Unicef and the World Health Organization. This is a long story Alison will happily regale over a glass of wine.

From 1994, the family, now expanded to include another child, moved briefly to Bonn, before settling back in Zurich. There, in addition to adding yet again to Europe’s population, Alison freelanced for the New York Times.

In 2004, the family relocated to Frankfurt. This time Alison landed in the PR department at Opel, the car company. Seven years later, the family moved to Vienna, hands down the best place they ever lived. There, Alison lectured for Webster University and freelanced for a variety of publications.

That stint ended when her husband was transferred back to Zurich. When Covid hit, Alison, her husband, daughter and their dog moved into a 300-year old farm house in a remote corner of the Alps. There, she decided she’d try her hand at meeting that high school goal of writing a novel.

Her breakthrough came when the Irish Writers Centre named Ilona Gets A Phone as a Novel Fair 2022 finalist. Two years later, that book, now titled Budapest Noir: Ilona Gets A Phone, will be published by Dedalus Books UK.

When not writing, she pulls weeds from her garden and hunts mushrooms in the mountains. All the children have flown the coop, leaving only her faithful husband and dog by her side.