Samantha Dunn

At 16 I escaped the trailer in New Mexico (Lot #78), thanks to a scholarship that took me to Sydney, Australia. Later I received a fellowship to Paris, France, where I got a job writing and answering phones for a French heavy metal magazine (they needed someone who spoke "American"). After moving to L.A., I worked at such luminous publications as "Hospital Gift Shop Management" and "Nailpro" before writing my debut novel, Failing Paris (Toby Press). Thankfully the critics loved it (displaying "fierce control over her material, coupled with feeling and beauty of language," said the L.A. Times), and it nabbed finalist honors for the PEN West Fiction Award in 2000...Someone told me to "break a leg" and I did: The Portland Oregonian called my next book, the memoir Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life (Henry Holt& Co.), "witty, smart, droll, moving and always entertaining." It scored as a BookSense 76 pick. Lifetime Television snapped up the option for my most recent memoir, Faith in Carlos Gomez: A Memoir of Salsa, Sex and Salvation (Owl Books), but alas, spiked it, so now the script is searching for a home. I'm also co-editor, along with the brilliant Julianne Ortale, of the short story anthology, Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles (Toby Press).My work is anthologized in a few different places: My essay “By A Hair” comes out in the hotly anticipated antho Damage Control: The Beauticians, Therapists and Trainers Who Navigate Our Bodies (Avon Books, June 2007). Other collections that feature my work include Another City, edited by David Ulin; How We Live Our Yoga (Beacon Press); and Oprah Magazine’s Live Your Best Life (Oxmoor House).My essays have appeared in a number of national publications, such as the Los Angeles Times, O (Oprah) Magazine, Ms., and Shape. As a freelance journalist, over the years my bylines have been regularly featured in InStyle, Glamour, SELF, Men's Health and a variety of other consumer magazines. I've also written for the stage, as a co-creator of the show "American Ese" with director Noah Blake.I teach memoir and personal essay through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Please check my website at www.samanthadunn.biz. (BTW, my author shot is by David Sobel; the b&w are shots by Lupe Fernandez)

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