Eric Grunwald (Writer, Teacher, Reviewer, Translator, and Photographer)

Eric Grunwald lives in Boston, where he is currently at work on his first novel (or two), a collection of short stories, and other projects. His fiction has appeared in Edit Red (fka Spoiled Ink). His book reviews have appeared in The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Denver Post, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and Agni. His translations (from German) have appeared in Partisan Review (2002), Two Lines (2005), and most recently, The MacGuffin (Hermann Hesse's fairy tale "The Poet," Grunwald's translation of which shared second place in the 1998 Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize. His non-fiction has appeared in The Improper Bostonian.

Grunwald holds a BA from Stanford University in Russian and East European history and an MA in creative writing (fiction) from Boston University. From 2000 through early 2004 he was managing editor at the internationally recognized Agni Magazine, overseeing the production of nine biannual issues including a 400-page issue (Agni 54) dedicated to Amnesty International's fortieth anniversary; a 480-page poetry anthology (Agni 56, the magazine's largest issue ever), dedicated to Agni's own thirtieth anniversary; and the first three issues (Agnis 57-59) under acclaimed literary critic Sven Birkerts, the journal's first new editor in its three-decade history.

Grunwald has received grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation (2003) and the St. Botolph’s Club Foundation (2001), as well as residency fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. He has taught expository composition at Boston University, creative writing at Brookline Adult Education, and English in Berlin Germany. As a longtime member of PEN New England's Freedom to Write Committee (of which he is now chair) teaches volunteer writing workshops at Northampton County Prison and Bay State Correctional Center. He is also co-founder, with William Delman and Kate Woodworth, and associate director of the Bay State Underground reading series in Boston.

Born and raised in Spokane, Washington, he began his college career at Stanford fully intending to become an electrical engineer or astrophysicist. He’s still not sure what happened, though he does recall sleeping out in front of the English Department several times to get into creative writing workshops, dropping them after one class, and (according to a classmate) developing a reputation in the Department as “that guy who always signs up for the creative writing workshops but drops them after one class.” After graduation in June 1990 he spent close to a year in Berlin during the German Reunification, first working as a salesperson in a pastry shop, then teaching technical English to engineers from the former German Democratic Republic and becoming fluent in German.

Grunwald has also worked in technology licensing (the quarterly newsletter, Brainstorm,, which he conceived, wrote, and edited for four+ years is still being published and was mentioned in the Atlantic Monthly in 2001), technical writing, and university fundraising.

Currently Grunwald teaches fiction writing and American literature at Suffolk University, ESL at Roxbury Community College and privately, and German at Boston Language Institute. Last year he had two roles for Lesley University's production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (Texas).

He also encourages you to support your independent bookstore, and wants to tell you that if you MUST use Amazon, at least access it through the website for Boston NPR station WBUR (www.wbur.org), which will then receive a small percentage of the sale. And he thanks you; by yea and no, he does.