Work Pages — Perrin Drumm

PERRIN DRUMM

Writer, editor, publisher———
up for almost anything.

ONLINE/
OFFLINE

More info than you need to know:
I was born in Pasadena, California, which anyone will tell you is a very safe place to live, but since I was born I’ve had two concussions, cracked and chipped my front tooth (and grown a full extra set of teeth, like a shark, 13 of which became cavities), split open my lip, been stung by a stingray, and broken my arm (all the way up to my shoulder). When the cast came off I had a scar on my elbow in the shape of a nipple. I have a scar on my chin where I cut it wide open falling out of bed. I have scars on my knees from playing little league as a little girl and then softball as a Panda at an all-girls high school in L.A. During one practice I blacked out and fell on my face in center field and got a scab on my upper lip in the exact shape of Hitler’s mustache. Luckily, it didn’t leave a mark.

I went to the College of Santa Fe (which was later briefly called Santa Fe University of Art and Design before it went out of business), where I played cricket recreationally and didn’t get hurt once. I got degrees in creative writing and fine art, and then a master’s in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. I wrote my thesis on satire and humor, though I often write stories that aren’t funny at all.

I live in Brooklyn and work as a publisher, a job you’d think is pretty safe, but in the past few years I’ve been thrown from my bike twice, torn my rotator cuff, twisted my knee out of its socket, undergone a minor toe operation, and survived two rounds of eye surgery. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Before all the stuff I do now, I founded AIGA’s Eye on Design and ran it for six years. Before that, I co-founded food + design platform MOLD while working as a senior editor at Condé Nast (Details, RIP). I’ve held editor positions at Adobe, The Architect's Newspaper, and The Sundance Channel. I’ve interned at more magazines than I can count.

My writing has appeared in New York Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Interview, GQ, Print, Frieze, Riposte, Art in America, Artforum, V Magazine, VMAN, and Vogue. My fiction has been published far and wide in my own notebooks as well as in literary magazines so obscure they barely have functioning websites. In a former life I was a ghost writer for TED speakers (you think they write all that stuff themselves?).

Listen to me blather about some of it on a podcast.