Service To Others
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with writer and editor Samantha Dunn
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Samantha Dunn is the senior editor of premium content at the Southern California News Group, which publishes the Orange County Register. She produces the virtual program on BOOKISH about authors, thinkers and the literary life. She is also the author of several books including the novel Failing Paris, a finalist for the PEN West Fiction Award, and a bestselling memoir, Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life.
Sam’s essays and short stories are anthologized in a number of places, including the anthology, Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles, which she co-edited. As a journalist, her bylines have appeared nationally in O the Oprah Magazine, Salon, Shape, InStyle, Ms., Los Angeles Times, Alta Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and many others.
Sam also teaches nonfiction writing at Chapman University and through the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers with Pam Houston.
What are you reading now?
There’re a half dozen student manuscripts and the articles for the next magazine I’m supposed to be editing, but I made the mistake of cracking open the galley of Sarah Tomlinson’s new psycho-thriller, “The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers.” Now all I want to do is see how it ends. It delves into the literary demi monde that is ghostwriting, something I’ve done a fair amount of in my career to pay the bills. Sarah gets to the complicated moral core of it in this compulsively readable book. I’m also loving my friend Steven Almond’s new book on craft, “Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories.” He’s such a soulful, smart guy and the book is full of truths and insights – not only about writing, but about just how not to be, you know, an asshole of a person.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
To know me is to know that I was practically weaned on horse books – “Black Beauty,” “My Friend Flicka,” “Misty of Chincoteague.”
But that was little kid stuff. The book that made truly the biggest impact on me was a paperback I found in a stack on my mom’s nightstand, “Scruples” by Judith Krantz. It was about a heroine Billy Ikehorn (Billy, which was a boy’s name, not unlike Sam, my name. This I noted immediately). She was an intelligent but tubby and unattractive girl who came from a bitter family (more evidence of our similarities). But all it takes is a trip to France to release the real Billy. She goes to Paris, and in the process of learning to speak French not just well but brilliantly, she learns how to dress and to wear makeup, becomes beautiful. When she comes back to the States, men fall in love with her, but not she with them, and through sheer force of wits and her classy beauty, she becomes famous, rich, trounces the bad guys, meets some gorgeous Italian who is her true love, and has the requisite happy ending.
I thought I had found a blueprint to get me out of the trailer park. And I did in fact learn to speak French and I did get to France. So I wasn’t totally wrong, I guess.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I’m not a big rereader of anything – there’s too much to get to! – with the exception of Didion’s “Slouching Toward Bethlehem.” I keep it on my work desk just to inhale the prose, even though I’ve memorized much of it at this point.
Did any book ever help me through a dark time? Why honey, don’t books exist to keep us alive?
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
A pair of jeans. Bury me in Levis.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?
Not recent, necessarily – my good friend Pam Houston has a lot of great lines she tells students. My favorite is, “Trust the metaphor, it knows more than you do.” I think about this a lot. True in writing, also true in life.
6. Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
Forgive the seeming self-promotion on this one, but my memoir “Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life” is all about my great love, Harley, the Thoroughbred that almost killed me. Also my recent essay “Mareish” in Francesca Lia Block’s literary journal, LitAngels, delves into my partnership with a magnificent Belgian Draft mare, Emma.
Yeah, horses are my thing. I don’t know myself separate from them.
What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
My life?
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
Dancing in the kitchen! In fact if I didn’t know you ask this same question of all your writers I’d think you were spying on me. I wrote a book once called “Faith in Carlos Gomez” about falling into the seductive world of salsa dancing – I spent years spending my nights in clubs from LA to New York. But these days the only mambo that happens is me cranking Tito Puente or the Fania All Stars when I’m cooking. My son used to dance with me but now he’s a too-cool-for-that-Mom-don’t-embarrass-me teenager.
What are your hopes for yourself?
Funny, that. In my youth I wanted to be famous. I’ve lived close enough to fame to feel ridiculous to have ever wanted such a thing. Now, honestly, I hope that my work and my life can be of some service to others. That I can leave my son with a legacy he can be proud of.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
Oh my god I don’t even know where to start. My whole existence is one big act of grace by others.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
The knowledge that we can make a difference in each other’s lives, if we only choose to.
Bury me in Levi's!! Love it!
“Trust the metaphor, it knows more than you do.” There are many moments of brilliance in this Q&A, but I’ll be thinking about this line for a long while.