Alexandra Behr

Alex Behr authored PLANET GRIM: STORIES (7.13 Books, 2017). Her essays, interviews, and stories have appeared in Salon, Tin House, Bitch, The Rumpus, Nailed, and elsewhere. An adoptive mom, she has written about being in a transracial family for National Geographic School Division, Oregon Humanities, Mutha, and The Manifest-Station. She played bass, keyboards, and guitar for years in underground bands in San Francisco and in Portland, and contributed to fanzines. She has performed nationwide in the comedy show Mortified, sharing the worst from her teen diaries. An MFA graduate in creative writing from Portland State, she is a copyeditor, former educational publishing author, and a teacher through Writers in the Schools. She lives in Portland, OR, with her son and cat, both of whom are often hungry.

"Alex Behr's Planet Grim turned me inside out. No, really, these stories of eros and ids getting loose, inner contradictions and desires crashing into each other like marbles, brutal instances of violence up against a moment of tender beauty, the people and lovers and mothers and families in this book are carved from the guts of us. What sits dead center at this hybrid of self and other is, mercifully, an unbeaten heart."

—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan

“Alex Behr’s imagination is wild, rigorous, and totally unique. I haven’t been able to decide if her stories are comedies intercut with horror or horror stories leavened by comedy, but when they’re this entertaining, who cares?”

—Tom Bissell, author of Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve

“Alex Behr’s characters are conflicted, uncertain, and pained. What’s so compelling about her fiction is how she honors that conflictedness, explores the uncertainties, and examines the pain until it reveals itself as irreducibly human and therefore a kind of grace.”

—Dan DeWeese, author of You Don’t Love This Man and Disorder

“In Alex Behr’s funny poignant stories the kids are sharp, fearless, and insatiable, the parents conflicted, lustful, and tough. The meaning of family and love is an epic game nobody can win or stop playing.”

—Mary Rechner, author of the story collection Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women