Ask the Author: Karen Munro

Karen Munro’s hilarious Agenda which any one in academia can relate to, is included in our December issue. She talks with us about her work, cybernetic implants, and the strangeness of the Northwest.

1. How did you go about creating “Agenda”?

I spent ten years working in higher education, then fiddled around with the footnote feature in Word. Ta-da!

2. As a interviewing colleague, how do you prepare your interview questions?

Not very well, probably. But I do try to get in an early veto of the classic passive-aggressive non-starter, “What are your biggest
weaknesses?”

3. What’s on your agenda?

Answer emails. Drop off dry cleaning. Subvert the heteronormative hegemony. You know, the usual.

4. Have you ever written Northern Exposure slash-fic? If you haven’t, would you?

No. Uh.

5. What cybernetic implant would you want to have?

Anything that allows me to see through an infrared grid. Or, alternately, anything from Fritz Kahn’s marvelous 1920s-era cyborgish
anatomical drawings.

6. What is so strange about the northwest?

Bigfoot, seasonal affective disorder, black mold, cultist communes, active volcanoes, banana slugs, meth labs, nudists, ballot measures, Merry Pranksters, the Armillaria ostoyae fungus, and D.B. Cooper…for starters.