Melissa Grunow: Power Profile
I met Melissa Grunow on Facebook in 2018. We were both heading to AWP in 2019 in Portland, and she’d happened to post that she was going to see Cheryl Strayed’s play, Tiny Beautiful Things. I messaged her before I lost my nerve and asked if she’d mind if I went with her. She said yes! We then met in real life randomly when I was getting out of the elevator at the conference hotel. There’s something magical about meeting an online friend for the first time in the face-to-face world. We laughed and went to dinner and a show, and have since become great friends—writer-friends and friend-friends. She’s a foster mom to beautiful dogs, and her dogs and my cats talk to each other over the interwebs. You get it. I know you do.
I’m proud to feature Melissa here and to lift up her work.
LH: What issues/ideas/questions do you find continue to circle through your work?
MG: As a writer of primarily creative nonfiction (though I also write short stories), my work tends to hover around themes of loss, trauma, relationships, resilience, wonders of the natural world, and the self.
My first book, Realizing River City, is memoir that explores my failed relationships with men in my twenties and what I learned about abuse and myself as a result. My second book, I Don’t Belong Here, is a collection of personal essays that explore all aspects of belonging (and not belonging) as a woman in a precarious world.
LH: How do you engage with literary citizenship and its role in building a community of supportive writers?
MG: I am connected to authors all over the country, thanks to social media. I cheer them on as they write and buy their books when they are published. Attending conferences and taking classes also keep me connected to the literary community. I write blurbs and book reviews for newly published work. When I lived in Detroit, the literary community there was large and thriving and I was connecting with writers at every social function. Now that I’m in central Illinois, the community is smaller, but I’ve done my best to engage. I attend and read at open mics at a small bookstore here called Lit On Fire, and I’m starting an online literary magazine next year for students at Illinois Central College.
LH: Self-promotion is a necessary task in today’s marketplace. How do you approach self-promotion and have your views changed on it over time?
Self-promotion is the hardest part about being an author. Self-promotion is time-consuming and energy-draining, so I have to be careful to not let it take over completely, otherwise I am unable to produce new work.
I maintain a Facebook page for my writing where I post links to publications and support fellow writers. I also have a website where I sell personalized and signed copies of my books. For both of my books, I set up my own book tour by contacting bookstores, libraries, and community reading series, and traveled all over the U.S. to read to audiences and sell my books.
Over time, I have learned to be selective about which book events to attend. For instance, I don’t do book fairs anymore. Tabling at a book fair just has not generated the kinds of sales I need to justify the time and expense. If I have to travel long-distance for a reading, I will only do so if I’m reading with other authors because those events are the most satisfying for me, and they tend to attract a larger audience.
LH: There are so many extreme crises in the world today demanding our attention. Often, we hear push-back from others about how art doesn’t matter or isn’t worth the time of the artist or the receiver. What is your answer to those who say art is a waste of time?
MG: Art is the antidote to suffering. If it wasn’t worth our time, we wouldn’t do it. Every artist I know continues to do their work regardless of the doubt and naysaying because that’s what we are compelled to do. I don’t waste my time on people who say art is a waste of time.
LH: What metaphor best expresses your creative process?
This is a great question, but I don’t have an answer. My creative process isn’t really a process at all. To keep myself writing, I take classes, attend workshops and writing retreats, and even use prompts to generate new work. I keep a notebook full of phrases and idea snippets scribbled on Post-It notes and even cocktail napkins to return to later and maybe turn those quick ideas into an essay. Because I’m a professor at a college, during the academic year, most of my attention is on my students and classes, so I often write when I can carve out large chunks of time during breaks. I don’t write every day. I don’t even write every week. I write when I can and revise extensively. I love revision because I already have text to work with and taking the time away from my work gives me an opportunity to read it from a new perspective, rip it apart, and rebuild it into something better.
LH: What are you currently working on and why does it matter to you?
MG: I have three projects in the hopper right now, but the one that I’m prioritizing is a true crime memoir. When I was a child, I was the victim of a crime, and the adults who should have protected me did not pursue criminal charges against the perpetrator. Twenty years later, I learned this same man was on trial for molesting his own daughter. The book tells the story of the crime committed against me and the proceedings of the trial. This book matters to me because it’s a story that needs to be told. There was no justice for me, but there was justice for his other victim.
LH: What writer’s work would you like to elevate here?
MG: Oh, there are so many good writers and good books! Some of my favorites:
Circadian by Chelsey Clammer
Pain Woman Takes Your Keys by Sonya Huber
The Unspeakable by Meghan Daum
Townie by Andre Dubus III
Musalaheen by Jason Arment
The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
By the Forces of Gravity by Rebecca Fish Ewan
Abandon Me by Melissa Febos
The Other Side by Lacy M. Johnson
The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson
Between Panic and Desire by Dinty W. Moore
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
This One Will Hurt You by Paul Crenshaw
Melissa Grunow is the author of I DON'T BELONG HERE: ESSAYS (New Meridian Arts Press, 2018), finalist in the 2019 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Award and 2019 Best Indie Book from Shelf Unbound, and REALIZING RIVER CITY: A MEMOIR (Tumbleweed Books, 2016) which won the 2018 Book Excellence Award in Memoir, the 2017 Silver Medal in Nonfiction-Memoir from Readers' Favorite International Book Contest, and Second Place-Nonfiction in the 2016 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, The Nervous Breakdown, Two Hawks Quarterly, New Plains Review, and Blue Lyra Review, among many others. Her essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and listed in the Best American Essays notables 2016 and 2018. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction with distinction from National University. She is an assistant professor of English at Illinois Central College.
Website: www.melissagrunow.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/melissagrunowauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/melgrunow
