About me + contact

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 my front tooth, 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 a BA in creative writing and art, and then an MFA 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 an editor and 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, and undergone minor toe surgery. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

✍🏽 perrin [at] perrindrumm.com

Speed read my CV
Before all the stuff I do now, I founded and was the director of AIGA’s Eye on Design (read my six-year sob story). Prior to that, I co-founded food + design platform MOLD while working as a senior editor at Conde Nast (Details, RIP). I’ve held editor positions at Adobe, The Architect’s Newspaper, and The Sundance Channel.

My writing has appeared in New York Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Interview, GQ, Print, Frieze, Slate, Art in America, Artforum, Departures, V Magazine, Vogue, Cool Hunting, and Core77. My fiction has been published far and wide in my own notebooks as well as in The Arkansas Review. I’ve also ghost-written for TED speakers (you think they write all that stuff themselves?).

🎙️ Podcasts + Speaking: 

• Scratching the Surface, äntrepõ, Stack Magazines, and Monocle Radio
• Designing a New MoMA, a conversation with MoMA’s design team
• Blathering about the problem with the word “community” at Birmingham Design Festival
• Moderating the first Eye on Design Debate
• At the Wix Playground dishing out career therapy (2019)
• Moderating Wix Playground’s 2021 Working Through Uncertainty career therapy event
• Offering more unsolicited career advice at Jessica Walsh’s Ladies, Wine & Design
• Paneling it up with magCulture + speaking at ModMag NYC 2019, ModMag London 2018, and ModMag NYC 2018
• Attempting to start a design union to advocate for fair labor practices for creative freelancers

🏠 Residencies:

• 2020 Designer in Residence, UT Austin’s School of Design + Creative Technologies

🗳️ Jury:

• 2020 RGD So(cial) Good Design Award
• 2020 + 2021 Paris Design Award
• 2020 Pearlfisher Design Award
• 2019 + 2020 Monotype Type Champions Award

Illustration by Isabel Castillo Guijarro