Eric Grunwald: Writer, Teacher, Writing Coach, Manuscript Consultant
(& occasional Translator, Photographer, Actor)

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 Sunday 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.

Currently Grunwald teaches writing, fiction, and American literature at Suffolk University and ESL privately. He has taught ESL at Roxbury Community College and German at Boston Language Institute. He now does fiction and non-fiction manuscript consultations for Grub Street, and consults one-on-one as a writing coach. (Email me for more details.) As former chair of PEN New England's Freedom to Write Committee, he also still directs its prison writing program, organizing and leading writing workshops in men's and women's prisons in Massachusetts.

An avowed Italophile, Grunwald has for the last few years been fitfully learning Italian, spending two- and four-week stints in Venice and elsewhere at language schools. In March 2009 he will be fortunate enough to attend the (competitive-entry) Sirenland writers' conference in Positano, Italy, to work with one of his favorite writers, Jim Shepard.

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, 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.

Grunwald encourages you to support your local independent bookstore and wishes to request that if you must use Amazon, for God's sake at least access it through the website for Boston NPR station WBUR, which then receives a small percentage of the sale.

"This is the year. We either get it right, now, or we risk never getting it right, ever."
-- Bill McKibben, Environmental Author

Fun facts:
- Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large U.S. health insurance companies: +87
- Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428
- Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 7 in 10
- Portion of its membership that Washington State's subsidized health plan intends to lose this year: 1/3
- Average percentage by which it is raising premiums in order to do so: 70
- Year in which Nick Jonas of the pop group The Jonas Brothers intends to run for president: 2040
- Annual melting rate of glaciers in Greenland in 2006: 36 cubic miles
- Rate in 1996: 21.6 cubic miles
- Amount global sea levels could rise if melting continues at this rate: 20 feet.
- Exxon/Mobil's profits for 2008: $40 billion
- Cost to produce a gallon of bottled water: $0.80-$8
- Cost for tap water: <1 cent
- Number of contaminants the federal government requires tap water to be tested for and reported: 120
- Number of filtration and disinfection requirements for bottled water: 0
- Number of reporting requirements: 0
- Amount of city garbage Boston recycles annually: 15 percent
- Amount Seattle does: 50 percent
- Millions of televisions Americans discard every year: 25
- Millions of cellphones: 130 million
- Tons of toothbrushes: 25,000