In the 1990s, Dunn wrote a regular column on boxing for PDXS, in which she at one time provided detailed criticism of Evander Holyfield's sportsmanship in his controversial fight with Mike Tyson. She was an editor and contributor for the online boxing magazine. She has been described as 'one of the better boxing writers in the United States'. Having fallen in love with the sport, she went on to cover the sport for a number of publications, including PDXS, The Oregonian, and The New York Times. In 1981, Dunn began writing about boxing in Willamette Week. She taught advanced classes in creative writing at Oregon's Lewis & Clark College and a graduate course in the same subject at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. In the 1970s, she hosted a radio show on Portland's community radio station KBOO, during which she read short fiction by other authors. ĭunn waited tables in the morning before her son woke up, and tended bars at night, painted houses, and did voice-over work. She settled in the Nob Hill neighborhood, where she resided until her death. After living for seven years at various locations, they returned to Portland to stay 'because there was a good alternative public school', namely the Metropolitan Learning Center. She gave birth to her son in Dublin, Ireland. Here, she finished her second novel, Truck (1971), and became pregnant. Together, they traveled to Mexico, Boston, Newfoundland, and Seville, where she finished Attic, then to Karpathos. During a Christmas break trip to Ashbury Heights in 1967 she met a man she would spend the next ten years with. Later life and career ĭunn began her first novel Attic (1970) while studying at Reed College. In college she majored in philosophy and then psychology.

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

She is best known for her novel Geek Love (1989). Katherine Karen Dunn (Octo– May 11, 2016) was an American novelist, journalist, voice artist, radio personality, book reviewer, and poet from Portland, Oregon.

Katherine dunn's geek love