Sad Girl Manifesto

Resurrection is a tricky art. Not everyone can hack it. Six years after her passing, Katherine Dunn may finally receive her due as a heroine of outsider fiction. In a 1991 dispatch on the Portland literary scene from the Washington Post, Katherine Dunn was crowned the “gonzo queen” to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “mentor/mom.” By the nineties, Dunn was already considered a Portland fixture after long years spent bartending and wheedling her way into the boxing scene as both an amateur fighter and journalist. She had garnered a stable of celebrity admirers in arbiters of outsider chic like Lana Wachowski, Courtney Love, Tim Burton, and Flea. Weird fiction was in.