BIOGRAPHY

Alanah Fitch has been writing her whole life.   Her B.A. was in cultural anthropology where she studied two years in Mexico City and Bogota becoming fluent in Spanish.  She lived rurally studying economic decision making in an isolated village in the state of Puebla, Mexico.  she had decided to join the Peace Corps, a decision requiring a detour into Soil Science.  From there she made a leap into chemistry when she encountered and became fascinated with electrons. She eventually ended up as an assistant professor of chemistry where felt required to hide her background.  In her tenure clock time, she was manic with all the demands of working in an untrained profession and motherhood.  Her undergraduate anthropology manifested itself in a keen eye to the field of science and scientists and their foibles.  This resulted in the play on Cold Fusion.  The work had a reading at the Goodman Theatre where it was suggested it would make a memorable musical.  In quest of that she obtained a play writing certificate from Loyola University Chicago, attended the New Tuners musical writing workshop, and expanded her repertoire of plays.  Ultimately Cold Fusion work had to be set aside due to the constraints of academia and motherhood.  She has returned with the same passion she had for her research to her play “infants” with retirement from a 40-year career.   Cold Fusion the musical is now more than a figment of imagination consisting of 21 songs (book and lyrics by Fitch, composed by Kyra Leigh).   Cold Fusion in its musical form will be read at the Chicago Dramatist’s Russ Tutterow Theatre May 25, 2026.    In addition to Cold Fusion she has a play, House of Butterflies, in which the heavy metal lead plays a leading role.  House of Butterflies had directed large audience readings at Loyola University Chicago and Seattle University.  In Jessie and the Architect a precocious teen encounters Mies van der Rohe, the modernist architect, living in purgatory in her public high rise housing project kitchen.  A 10-minute play Whose Story Is It? explores the difficult ability to experience love.  When not consumed with playwriting she spends time at the hammered dulcimer, with her husband, children and their children.  In addition to publishing a book on lead (Sublime Lead: At the Intersection of Art, Science, and Politics) she is working with several other women on a solicited text of electrochemistry.