People like Katherine Dunn

Katherine Karen Dunn (October 24, 1945 – May 11, 2016) was a novelist, journalist, voice artist, radio personality, book reviewer, and poet from Portland, Oregon. She is best known for her novel Geek Love (1989). She was also a prolific writer on boxing.

Dunn was born in Garden City, Kansas, in 1945. She was the second-youngest of five siblings; her father left before she was two. Her mother, Velma Golly, an artist from North Dakota, married a mechanic or/and fisherman from the Pacific Northwest. The family moved often during her childhood. She went to high school in Tigard, Oregon, and later attended Reed College in Portland on a full scholarship, but never graduated. She suffered a difficult childhood due to poverty and a violent mother. She left home for good when she was 17. Poverty was an important element in her novels as well. In college she majored in philosophy and then psychology.