Published in 2021
252 pages
Megan Dunn studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, graduating in 2006. She won an Escalator award from the New Writing Partnership (now The Writers’ Centre Norwich) and her short story ‘The Mermaid and the Music Box’ was included in Roads Ahead, a 2009 anthology of new writers published by Tindal St Press. Her first book, Tinderbox, was published by Galley Beggar Press in November 2017.
What is this book about?
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.
