Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love, Attic and Truck, is a natural story-teller with a jubilant personality who grew up in a migrant blue-collar family in the West.

She has never had any formal training, but she knew from her childhood that she would one day become a writer. Once successful, she feared her lack of training would come back to haunt her because she believed she lacked the variety and flexibility of most writers. But, she continues to have a fan-base especially for her column on boxing in the local alternative paper in Portland, Oregon, where she now lives and works.

Her interest in DNA and genetic manipulation came together in her novel, Geek Love. The word “geek” tends to mean someone you would prefer not to date. But the originally meaning of the word and the definition that is used in book is a character in a sideshow that bites the heads off live chickens or other small animals. In this story, a couple that works in a freak show deliberately give birth to freaks, so their children will always have jobs. This weird and original piece of work follows the lives of these people as though their deformations or other unique qualities were normal occurrences.

She also discusses her book, Attic, which is a fictional elaboration of the time of her life that she spent in jail for writing bad checks.

To hear more about her amazing journey, click on the link below.

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For over a decade, many of the best writers of the English language found their way onto Don Swaim's daily two-minute CBS Radio show, Book Beat. His New York-based program was derived from longer interviews, sometimes 40-minutes in length. Found exclusively here, Wired for Books proudly webcasts these conversations in their entirety using RealAudio.