Katherine Dunn collection

Collection

Identifier: OLPb164DUN

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Katherine Dunn collection includes includes handwritten and typed manuscript versions for all four of Dunn’s published novels including Attic (1970), Truck (1971), Geek Love (1989) and Toad (2022). Other literary material includes research notes, drafts, and publication copies for Dunn’s work in fiction and as a journalist and essayist. Additional material in the collection includes fan art and ephemeral material related to the Geek Love frenzy, stage adaptations and screenplays of Dunn works, as well as correspondence, interviews, and personal ephemera related to her life and work.

Some material, including unpublished manuscript drafts, is restricted and requires permission from the Dunn estate prior to viewing. Please contact archives@lclark.edu for more information.

Dates

Creation: 1960-2016

Creator

Dunn, Katherine, 1945-2016 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

The majority of the collection is open for research. Some material is restricted and requires permission from the Dunn estate before viewing. Please contact archives@lclark.edu for more information.

Conditions Governing Use

Watzek Library Special Collectoins does not hold copyright to the materials in this collection. Users of Watzek Library Special Collections are expected to abide by all copyright and other intellectual property laws.

Biographical / Historical

Katherine Dunn (1945-2016) was an award-winning writer and journalist, who is best known for her highly praised novel Geek Love, first published in 1989. In addition to publishing three novels, from 1984-1992 Dunn wrote a weekly advice column the Slice for Portland’s Willamette Week newspaper. Selections were published as "Why Do Men Have Nipples? and Other Low-Life Answers to Real-Life Questions" in 1992. Dunn went on to become an influential boxing journalist winning the Lange-Taylor Prize in 2004 for her work on "School of Hard Knocks: The Struggle for Survival in America’s Toughest Boxing Gyms." Dunn wrote the boxing series Punch Lines which ran weekly in the northwest Skanner newspaper from 1982 to 1995, with other writing appearing in publications from The Ring and KO Magazine to Vogue, Esquire and Playboy. An anthology of Dunn’s boxing essays was published as One Ring Circus: Dispatches from the World of Boxing in 2009. Dunn's novel Toad written in the 1970s was posthumously published by MCD x FSG in 2022.

Extent

80 boxes (43 linear feet)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Katherine Dunn (1945-2016) was an award-winning writer and journalist, who is best known for her novel Geek Love, first published in 1989. The Katherine Dunn collection includes material created and collected by Dunn during her lifetime, including original manuscripts and draft publications, research notes, and correspondence.