Katherine Dunn
Overview
 
Katherine Dunn is a best-selling novelist, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, voice artist, radio personality, book reviewer, and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 from Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

.
Dunn was born in Kansas City, Kansas
Kansas City, Kansas
Kansas City is the third-largest city in the state of Kansas and is the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the third largest city in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The city is part of a consolidated city-county government known as the "Unified...

 in 1945. She went to high school in Tigard, Oregon
Tigard, Oregon
Tigard is a city in Washington County, Oregon, United States. The population was 48,035 at the 2010 census. As of 2007, Tigard was the state's 12th largest city. Incorporated in 1961, the city is located south of Beaverton and north of Tualatin, and is part of the Portland metropolitan area...

, and later attended Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...

 in Portland. Following her time at Reed, Ms. Dunn spent several years in Europe traveling. While in Ireland, she had a child, and five years later she returned with her son to the United States.

In the 1970s Dunn hosted a radio show on Portland's community radio station KBOO
KBOO
KBOO is a non-profit organization, listener-funded FM Community radio station broadcasting from Portland, Oregon. The station's mission is to serve groups in its listening area who are underrepresented on other local radio stations and to provide access to the airwaves for people who have...

, in which she would read short stories.
Quotations

I had maggot brains that night and may have imagined half of it, and misunderstood the rest.

She blurbed through her Moms-All-Purpose-Adjustable-List-Of-Horrors that might have happened whenever a child is out of sight.

'Show off' was no insult in our family, but Arty had a way of turning 'sweetheart' into a thumb in the eye.

Papa had looked bad last time. This time he looked like Death's rectum.

She is suspicious and fearless and her progress is alarming.

It may be that the impressions of her infancy are caught somehow in the pulp of her eyes, luring her. Or there may be some hooked structure in her cells that twist her toward all that the world calls freakish.

And they looked at her, watched her, wanted to squirt her full of baby juice.

I wanted to cry, loud and wet with the pain of love.

The molasses voice pours into the sponge ear of the microphone and is transformed into silent, pulsing waves that radiate over a hundred miles.

Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them.

 
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