“I could tell you some raucous stories, but I won’t.”ĭunn was born in Garden City, Kan., in 1945. “She was such a private person,” says former WW reporter Susan Stanley, who remained a close friend. To her friends and fans, her past was a mystery, which she fiercely guarded. I told you you’d like it.’”īy the time Geek Love made her a cult figure, Dunn was 43 years old. “She was, I’m sure, punching me in the shoulder saying, ‘See, I told you. “This pure conveyance of a really brilliant take on the world, on emotion, on human frailty, on striving and failure, and she really made it make sense and made it beautiful. “It was in real time, what her writing was like,” Orlean says now. Instead, Dunn talked Orlean through each round, explaining the fighters’ jabs and footwork until the other writer grew fascinated, then entranced. “She finally convinced me to go,” Orlean says, “and I went imagining I would have my hands over my eyes most of the time and my fingers in my ears.” Susan Orlean, The New Yorker writer and author of The Orchid Thief, who worked alongside Dunn at WW in the early 1980s, recalls Dunn wrangling the newsroom into attending boxing matches. Those she left behind have been wistfully eager to describe her mettle, generosity and vitality-her ability to make life an adventure and take others along for the trip. Dunn’s death May 11 at age 70 from lung cancer robbed Portland of one of its finest writers and most inimitable characters.
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