Kristen Gunn hails from Houston, TX, where she spent her days escaping the heat by sitting under the live oaks, swimming in both chlorinated and salt-water pools, and frequenting the Museum of Natural Science. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Religious Studies and Linguistics and currently resides in Dallas, TX, where she mostly reads books in her hammock and enjoys the splendor of other human beings while waiting for apple pie to come out of the oven or dancing to live banjo music.
About Kristen Gunn
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The Extreme Selfie as an Art Form
I didn’t ask to become inane; it just happened one day while I was driving down the highway, trying to take a selfie while eating a burrito. (This was to stand in as a more interesting version of the “on my way” text.) Mercifully, the rice spilled on my dress, I realized what I was […]
Two Love Stories
For your weekend, here’s a reflection on what Alain de Botton considers to be the root of all status anxiety, from his 2004 book of that title. He begins by explaining that our never-ending search for love drives our hungry pursuit of status, and in turn that this love-search is only really half-acknowledged: “Every adult life could be […]
Saving Face: the Relational Politics of “I Don’t Know”
This post was co-written by Samantha McKean and Kristen Gunn. Sam is a student at Duke Divinity School, where she’s realizing what she actually does and doesn’t know. Kristen is heavily into words and why we say them, which is how this conversation became a post. Sam: I say “I don’t know,” a lot. It’s […]
Why Richard Rodriguez and I Keep Taking Our “Inner Atheists” to Church
Maybe novelty is the currency of the blogosphere—but then again, maybe not. Sometimes the brightest-shining gems come out of an old closet at your grandparents’ house (or in this case, an old box of $1 books at a library sale). It may be old (we’re talking last decade—you know, back when Pluto was a planet […]
Penny & Sparrow on Fleeing a Lover
There is, in fact, no BuzzFeed quiz for “Which Son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son Are You?”—and if there were, I’m not sure people would take it. As the story goes, a decently well-off man has two not-that-decent sons. The younger, wild and fugitive, asks his father for an advance on his inheritance. […]
Rubbing the Rabbit’s Foot: a Chronicle of Failure (with Free Quotes from Interesting People)
I did everything I could to avoid posting something this week. I slowly and meticulously inventoried all our books, even alphabetized them. I spent an afternoon hiding in the attic (read: furnace in the sky), then prolongedly squawked about how hot it was. I made a lot of pour-over coffees. I initiated long conversations about any- […]
"You Do Not Have to Be Good" and Other Lines That Could Save a Life
When the box spring squeals at four in the morning and jolts me into wakefulness—or when the sleeping pill wears off too early and I am dragged just so slowly by life’s tide back onto the shore of Day—I like to pretend God (or the universe, if it’s too early to say God) is trying […]
Death in a Penthouse Apartment
About two months ago, my five housemates and I began to notice a strange, persistent odor emanating from the left bathroom of our “penthouse” (read: dingy attic) apartment. For close to a week no one said anything, all suspecting each other of some unmentionable mishap we couldn’t prove. Of course, we ourselves couldn’t be the […]
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