Pioneering cult novelist. “What a wild, original and outrageously funny writer she is.” —TimeOut
Born in 1923, Jody Scott, or Joann Margaret Huguelet as it says on her birth certificate (Mr. Scott came later closely followed by Mr. Wood, two characters out of P.G. Wodehouse- if Wodehouse had happened to marry Jean Genet) was born in Chicago of an old-settler family of Fort Dearborn (as the toddlin’ town was once called) with loose ties to the underworld.
Ms. Scott attended Daniel Boone grammar school, Senn High, North Park College, Northwestern U. and U.C. Berkeley before crying out in clear, ringing tones: “Enough of this crap. If you wanna be a writer never, NEVER go to college or you’ll come out a brainwashed zombie who offends nobody but writes like everyone else—or as Monty Python used to say: ‘Dull, dull, dull!’ — the L’s sounding like W’s.”
Our subject then worked as a sardine packer, orthopedist’s office assistant, Circle Magazine editor (knew Henry Miller and Anais Nin), artist’s model at Art Institute Chicago, factory hand, cabbage puller (“in Texas where I was arrested with my buddy Don Scott for hitchhiking and slapped around then thrown in jail for eight days; how stupid can ‘The Law’ be? Its reasoning was: my gay friend (close pal of Leonard Bernstein and Tennessee Williams) had long hair, therefore we must be criminals.”).
Also blue movie maker, headline writer for the Monterey Herald (“that’s where I got my spare, lean style”), bookstore/art gallery owner, vacation land salesman and spent six months in Guatemala (“in Antigua enjoyed a night alone with Gore Vidal at his house both madly talking”) and lived in Seattle in a falling-down house choked with ivy and blackberry brambles a stone’s throw from Puget Sound, and was the winner of ‘America’s Ugliest Couch’ contest, upon which couch she wrote every day from 9 AM to 2 PM Pacific time.
Jody died in 2007.
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WEBSITE
jodyscott.info
SOCIAL MEDIA
facebook.com/authorjodyscott
twitter.com/jodyscottinfo
AWARDS
Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award
Nebula Award, preliminary nominee
Guggenheim, short-listed
