Jenn Grunigen
Background Description
I write to put my insides out; narrative is how I best understand myself and the world. I’m
also a drummer, recording and performing with numerous metal bands, and often find music to
be a visceral act of storytelling—but writing came first for me. It’s what I reach for whether I’m
trying to code or decode existence. My wordlove reaches back to early elementary school and
forward to now, my last year of a Master’s of folklore at the University of Oregon. My thesis,
titled “Mythpunk and the Queer Fox,” is in three parts: an online archive, Storyfox: A Database
of Vulpine Science Fiction and Fantasy Media; a research paper; and a collection of my own
foxy stories and poetry. Despite the converging storms of grad school, teaching, music and
divorce, I have continued writing. I’ve had stories and poetry published in Shimmer, Strange
Horizons, and Spolia; my novel Skyglass was recently serialized by Chromatic Press and
Sparkler Monthly, soon to be released by them as an e-book and in print. I’ve learned to juggle
my storms and keep them all in the air, but leaving my husband helped clear the air. Among
many other realizations and consequences that have come to pass, I now know that, amazing,
confounding and soul-breaking as grad school has been, now that it’s almost over, I need to
return to storytelling without reservation. I need a focused plunge back into fiction-writing:
Clarion West.
For most of my life, I have written novels. I still do. But after reading Catherynne Valente’s
collection The Melancholy of Mechagirl and Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees,
short fiction became equally as important. Two years spent living beneath Montana’s hungry
skies, paired with Mechagirl and Bees, taught me to be at odds with myself, to confront my own
multitudes and oppositions. I learned to write like I was reading prophecy from my own
intestines, all while binding it with folklore and the folkloresque. I penned stories about poetryobsessed robot pilots, lycanthropic red riding hoods, and audio-engineering troll girls. Now,
scrambling as I am among thesis foxes and a divorce, I have new stories in me. Most recently,
Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy has been making me grin, if a little warily, and in a
recent note to Sonya Taaffe, I told her that I wanted to tattoo the whole of her gorgeous, feral
story “Skerry-Bride” on either side of my spine.
I have experience as both a participant and organizer of writing workshops. I’ve taken a
novel-writing workshop with David Guterson; in Montana I worked on fiction with Richard
Fifield; most recently, I’ve been a member of Eugene, Oregon’s SF/F workshop Wordos. As an
undergrad, I ran a novel-writing workshop and volunteered with Whatcom Young Writers; as a
grad student, I’ve run numerous writing workshops in the English composition courses that I
teach. By and large, I prefer critique to be friendly, but blunt; sugar-coated comments just get in
the way of improving the craft. I go to workshops to learn, after all. I also try to avoid solving
problems for my students and/or fellow workshop participants, as I’ve found that the best
solutions are those that I find myself (which isn’t, of course, to say that I completely disregard
specific, proposed suggestions!). I can offer my Clarion peers a sharp ear when it comes to the
music of a piece on a microcosmic level (e.g., word choice, natural dialog, the rhythm of
sentences), as well from the more holistic perspective of overall tone and characterization.
Sensory portrayal, especially imagery, also tends to be my strength.
Balancing graduate school, writing, musical projects and personal turmoil hasn’t been
easy, but I like to think that I’ve handled it all with at least a modicum of grace, organization and
success. I feel confident that I will weather and thrive throughout Clarion West, bringing a
unique perspective to the table informed especially by music and folklore. Montana gave me
solitude and a huge, blue-raw sky to write upon. This time, I need the community and gentle
evisceration of a writing workshop to point out the things that I don’t know how to fix or
successfully carry out (such as solid story endings and clever, yet uncontrived stories), as well as
those things I don’t even know I don’t know. There's only so much I can learn on my own and if
I want to grow as a writer, I need to reach beyond my own sphere. I want to be brutal, precise,
and never shy. But to do all this, I need knives. I need safety. I need the intensity and company
that only an extended workshop such as Clarion West can offer.