Katherine Dunn

Katherine Dunn

October 24, 1945 - May 11, 2016

Katherine Dunn’s third novel, Geek Love, was a finalist for the National Book Award and for the Bram Stoker Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines ranging from The Mississippi Mud to The Paris Review. Dunn was a freelance boxing journalist for more than three decades, writing about the sport for Mother Jones, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Vogue, and Playboy, among many other publications. A collection of her boxing essays, One Ring Circus, was released in 2009. Her collaboration with photographer Jim Lommasson on the book Shadow Boxers won the Lange-Taylor Documentary Prize.

Dunn’s criticism and essays on cultural topics have been widely published. Death Scenes won the Firecracker Alternative Book Award. Dunn lived and worked in Portland, Oregon. For more on her life, see this article in The New York Times and this article by Pacific University. Her posthumously published book, On Cussing, was published by Tin House Books in March 2019. 

Photo by Elisabetta Villa

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