Melissa Grunow
Born: Saginaw, MI, 1980
Connection to Illinois: I have lived in East Peoria, IL, since 2018 and am an associate professor of English at Illinois Central College. Biography: 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 Brevity, 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, as well as listed in the Best American Essays notables 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2020. She is an associate professor of English at Illinois Central College.
Awards:
- Realizing River City: A Memoir 2018 Book Excellence Award in the Memoir category
- Realizing River City: A Memoir 2017 Silver Medal in Nonfiction-Memoir from Readers' Favorite International Book Contest
- Realizing River City: A Memoir 2016 Second Place Book of the Year Awards from Independent Author Network
Web: https://www.facebook.com/melissagrunowauthor
WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Melissa++Grunow
Selected Titles
 |
I Don't Belong Here: Essays ISBN: 0997603895 OCLC: New Meridian Arts 2018 What does it mean to belong? In a place? With a person? To a family? Where do our senses of security and survival lie? I Don't Belong Here ruthlessly investigates alienation during moments of transit and dislocation and their impact on women's identity. These twenty essays--ranging from conventional to lyrical to experimental in form and structure--delve into the root causes of personal uncertainty and the aftershock effects of being a woman in an unsafe world. Provocative, authentic, intimate, and uncompromising, Melissa Grunow casts light on the unspeakable: sexuality, death, mental illness, trauma, estrangement, and disillusionment with precision and fortitude --Page 4 of cover |
 |
Realizing River City: A Memoir ISBN: 1928094228 OCLC: Tumbleweed Books 2016 |