Things I Learned at Art School

Description

From the writer who brought you Tinderbox, a book about a woman trying to write a book, comes Things I Learned at Art School, a memoir by a woman who has never kept a diary. Until now. Part memoir, part essay collection, Megan Dunn's ingenious, moving, hilariously personal Things I Learned at Art School tells the story of her early life and coming-of-age in New Zealand in the '70s, '80s and '90s. From her single mother's love life to her Smurf collection, from the mean girls at school to the mermaid movie Splash, from her work in strip clubs and massage parlours (and one steak restaurant) to the art school of the title, this is a dazzling, killer read from a contemporary voice of comic brilliance. Chapters include (but are not limited to)- The Ballad of Western Barbie; A Comprehensive List of All the Girls Who Teased Me at Western Heights High School, What They Looked Like and Why They Did It; On Being a Redhead; Life Begins at Forty- That Time My Uncle Killed Himself; Good Girls Write Memoirs, Bad Girls Don't Have Time; Videos I Watched with My Father; Things I Learned at Art School; CV of a Fat Waitress; Nine Months in a Massage Parlour Called Belle de Jour; Various Uses for a Low Self-esteem; Art in the Waiting Room and Submerging Artist. Praise for Things I Learned At Art School- 'Megan Dunn is the perfect antidote to the literary sad-girl industrial complex. She has the best deadpan of the southern hemisphere. Wickedly funny and frequently disconcerting, these odd, savage gems have gravy for days.' - Hera Lindsay Bird 'I've been waiting for this cask wine drenched cruise through a juicy world of low art, popular culture, lurex, and frosty pussies. Dunn is bewilderingly funny and smart.' - Kiran Dass 'Dazzling. There is humour as black as night and all the stories are just so madly, moreishly readable.' - Steve Braunias 'I think Megan Dunn is a major writer waiting to happen.' - Bill Manhire 'Megan Dunn is a comic genius. The world needs more of her writing.' - Susanna Andrew, Metro Praise for Tinderbox- Megan Dunn's wry, whip-smart memoir about Fahrenheit 451, literary ambition & the last days of Borders Bookstores is funny & insightful as hell. Like Kathy Acker meets Sue Townsend. The read of the summer! ... already one of my favourite New Zealand books. "Tinderbox is such a shape-shifter, such a sui generis work, that to call it a memoir does it a disservice ... Dunn's voice is hard to resist - sardonic, brazen, sagacious - recalling, in places, Nora Ephron, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Maggie Nelson." - James Cook, Review 31

Megan Dunn (BFA, MA Creative Writing, University of East Anglia) is the author of Tinderbox (2017) and a reformed video artist. In the late nineties, she ran Fiat Lux, an artist run space in Auckland. Her art reviews and criticism have been widely published along with her essays and stories, including in Tell You What- Great New Zealand Non-Fiction (2016, AUP) and Roads Ahead (2009, Tindal St Press). In 2006, she won an Escalator award from the New Writing Partnership (now The Writers' Centre Norwich). In 2018 she was the recipient of the Louis Johnson New Writers Award, and the Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency Award. In 2019, she was the art editor for The Spinoff. In 2020 she received an Emerging Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre, where she worked on her next book of creative non-fiction. (That's this one.) She currently runs the events programme at City Gallery Wellington.