Lauren Quinn

Lauren Quinn is a recovering blogger, failed poet, former zine-maker and demoralized travel writer. These days she’s a non-fiction writer, editor and kindergarten teacher. She’s hoping this works out better for all involved parties.

Lauren’s recent work has appeared online and in print at The Rumpus, Nerve, This Recording, The Nervous Breakdown, World Hum, We Still Like, 7×7, San Francisco Chronicle and Best Women’s Travel Writing Volumes 8 and 9. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and used to write the blog Lonely Girl Travels. She tweets here and tumbles here.

Lauren currently lives in Hanoi, where she washed up after an ill-fated attempt at writing a book in Cambodia. She will always be an Oakland girl at heart.

Stories by Lauren:

• My Month as a Slut

  My sister clapped her hands and said, “Let’s get dressed up like sluts and go to the Beverly Center!” This is how it started. For my thirteenth birthday, my parents had gotten me tickets to f..Read more

• Vela Single: The Bright Burning of Dory Tourette

  After he’d freaked out. After he’d stood between the planks of a half-built patio pounding the guitar strapped to his chest, howling into the night and the sound rising up all around us. After ..Read more

• Apocalypse Soon

  The fog crept past the streetlight, swallowing the clouds of smoke we blew out, skinny or fat or from our noses in dragony tendrils. It was quiet there on the back porch; you really couldn’t ask ..Read more

• Sweat Ride through the Smog Swamp

  I met him when I was trying to get to work. I was walking down the street in the Old Quarter, dodging traffic in my too-baggy work pants, the Hanoian humidity pressing down on me like a clammy hand..Read more

• Girls, Girls, Girl

  The girls looked bored. They slouched in plastic chairs, picked at their nails, crossed and uncrossed their toothpick legs. Neon shadows slashed their skin, deepened the dark places, made their bon..Read more

• On the Rails in Phnom Penh

  We called him Eat Pray Paul. Because there were two Pauls and they were more or less indistinguishable — both red-faced old dudes who’d been kicking out Cambodia for years, smoking ice, shagging p..Read more

• Confessions of the Hamam Non-Sisterhood

  She flung the plastic bucket in my supine direction. The warm water leapt out, arched through the steaming black room and landed with a slap across my face. I gasped. I lay on my back, sopping wet ..Read more

• Could Have Stayed On The Highway

  Interstate 5 stretched out before us like a flat black stain on a dingy beige carpet. Desert, industrial orchards, slaughterhouses, gas stations, little shit towns with broke-down cars and rusted bicy..Read more

• Barang Goes To A Wedding

  I knew this only because the holes in the corrugated tin roof revealed swaths of night. The room rattled each time the music boomed, buzzed metallic with each twinge of distortion. I could feel it ..Read more

• The Angelo Who Isn’t There

  Street 182, just past dusk, and I’m moving through air as thick as swamp water. Moving like a swamp creature—Amazonian and dripping refuse, trailing foreign smells in my dirty jeans and hair. T..Read more

• A Trip To The Castle

  The tin fence around the shack is half-collapsed, and the smoke that billows out of the structure might be meat cooking or it might be trash—or, by the smell, both. We crunch the rocks and rubbis..Read more

• Cities Like Boys

  “Wait, wait—you’re moving to Cambodia?!” I nod. “I was just out there for a few months earlier this year. And now I’m headed back.” “Ah. So,” leans in, a hushed voice, “did y..Read more