Allison Lee

Author of ‘All the gear, No idea!’
A Memoir of Starting Out, Getting Lost and Finding the Way

Allison Lee’s writing career started in 2006, when she began writing nonfiction books based on my then-current career in childcare. she went on to write fourteen books, which were published by several publishers, including Bloomsbury and Continuum International.

Her forthcoming memoir, currently titled All the Gear, No Idea!, draws on Allison’s decision to exchange childcare for animal care after she and her husband bought twelve acres of land and a dilapidated barn to create their own smallholding. With warmth and humour, it recounts the planning battles, unpredictable animals and everyday triumphs and disasters that transformed their dream into a way of life.

Her first psychological thriller, My Husband’s Child, was published by Bad Press Ink in September 2025, and she has a second thriller due for publication later this year with Fisher King Publishing.

In October 2025, she released a smallholder’s handbook, Free Range and Flourishing, for which I have a publishing contract with Quiller Publishing. She is currently writing a follow-up book commissioned earlier this year, due for publication in 2028.

Allison writes weekly columns for the Yorkshire Times and Country Squire Magazine as their Smallholding Correspondent, and she also writes a monthly Smallholder Diary for the Dalesman Magazine together with monthly contributions for Country Smallholder Magazine.

Allison lives on a smallholding in North Yorkshire with her husband, Mark. They keep donkeys, ponies, pigs, sheep, goats and chickens. They have been married for almost four decades and have two sons and two granddaughters.

Allison is now retired and devotes her time between writing and her smallholding. 

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