Biography
Eric Grunwald is a poet, teacher, and translator. His poetry, fiction, and translations are forthcoming or have appeared in Great River Review, Prick of the Spindle, Partisan Review, Two Lines, and The MacGuffin. His book reviews have appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Denver Post, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Artsfuse and Agni.
Grunwald currently teaches in and directs the English Language Studies group at MIT. He has taught expository composition and ESL at Boston University as well as creative writing, American literature, and composition at Suffolk University. As former chair of PEN New England's Freedom to Write Committee, he directed its prison writing program, organizing and leading writing workshops in men's and women's prisons in Massachusetts. He also gives historical tours of Boston and surrounds with Boston Private Tours and Boston Urban Adventures.
From 2000 through early 2004, Grunwald was managing editor at the internationally recognized Agni Magazine, overseeing production of the biannual journal including a 400-page issue (Agni 54) dedicated to Amnesty International's fortieth anniversary; a 480-page poetry anthology (Agni 56), dedicated to Agni's 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.
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.” He ended up with a degree in Russian and East European history.
After graduation, Grunwald spent close to a year in Berlin during the German Reunification, first working as a salesperson in a Konditerei (bread/pastry shop), then teaching technical English to engineers from the former German Democratic Republic. He then returned to Stanford and worked in its Office of Technology Licensing for several years while beginning to write in earnest and in hiding until deciding he had to brave the light and get his MFA, which he then did at Boston University.
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 encourages you to support your local independent bricks-and-mortar bookstore.