Melissa Grunow
Award-Winning Author
Author of two books: the four-time award-winning memoir Realizing River City and essay collection, I Don't Belong Here, finalist in the 2019 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards and finalist in the 2019 Indie Book Awards from Shelf Unbound.
Check out my interview on The Rockie Zeigler Show podcast, episode 4, where we talk about my books, writing, running marathons, pets, and more.
I'm currently writing a true crime memoir, short story collection, and a speculative creative nonfiction essay collection.
Seeking literary agent representation.
I Don't Belong Here
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.
"This is a book whose moment in history is exactly now.”
Sue William Silverman, author of The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Angle-Saxon Jew
“In these wise essays, Melissa Grunow brings to light the hidden, the forgotten, and the discarded days. Her agile sentences and fearless gaze reveal insights that reach past easy epiphany and toward a rare clarity that is a searching delight to read.”
Sonya Huber, author of Pain Woman Takes Your Keys, and Other Essays from the Nervous System
Realizing River City
At times, life can feel like a challenging feat of survival. Whether it's living through abusive relationships or figuring out the complexities of what it means to be a woman searching for love. Realizing River City is a memoir that proves how despite the troubles we may face, there is hope in the way we continually risk ourselves in search for the life we want to live. In her poetic exploration of past relationships, Melissa Grunow's honest words do not falter in the face of so much loss. Taking the rage we all feel about grief and pain, and funneling it into truth, beauty, and ultimately redemption on each page, Realizing River City is about discovering how the most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves.
"A deeply rich meditation on what it means to be a woman in a sometimes uncertain and complicated world, in relationship to men, but ultimately, and more importantly, to oneself. Melissa Grunow's Realizing River City raises just as many questions as it answers, circling back always, in beautiful prose and a clear, honest voice, to what it means to be alive, to love, and to be present for all of it."
"Melissa Grunow has written an intimate exploration of need, desire, doubt, and survival; her memoir is remarkable for its heart-breaking honesty."
Robert Root, author of Happenstance and Postscripts: Retrospections on Time and Places
Amina Cain, author of
I Go to Some Hollow
