Miranda July (born February 15, 1974) is a performing artist, musician, writer, actress and film director. Born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, she works under the surname of "July," which can be traced to a character from a "girlzine" Miranda created with high school friend Johanna Fateman, called "Snarla".
Miranda July was born in Barre, Vermont, the daughter of Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger. Her parents, who taught at Goddard College at the time, are both writers. In 1974 they founded North Atlantic Books, a publisher of alternative health, martial arts, and spiritual titles. Miranda was encouraged to work on her short fiction by author and friend of a friend, Rick Moody.
Miranda grew up in Berkeley, California, where she first began writing plays and staging them at the all-ages club 924 Gilman. She later attended UC Santa Cruz, dropping out in her sophomore year. After leaving college, she moved to Portland, Oregon and took up performance art. Her performances were successful; she has been quoted as saying she has not worked a day job since she was 23 years old.
Beginning in 1996, while residing in Portland, July began a project called Joanie4Jackie (originally called "Big Miss Moviola") which solicited short films by women, which she compiled onto video cassettes, using the theme of a chain letter. She then sent the cassette to the participants, and to subscribers to the series, and offered them for sale to others interested. In addition to the chain letter series, July began a second series called the Co-Star Series, in which she invited friends from larger cities to select a group of films outside of the chain letter submissions. The curators included Miranda July, Rita Gonzalez, and Astria Suparak. The Joanie4Jackie series also screened at film festivals and DIY movie events. So far, thirteen editions have been released, the latest in 2002.
Filmmaker Magazine rated her number one in their "25 New Faces of Indie Film" in 2004. After winning a slot in a Sundance workshop, she developed her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which opened in 2005. The film won The Caméra d'Or prize in The Cannes Festival 2005 as well as the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Best First Feature at the Philadelphia Film Festival, Feature Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
At her speaking engagement at the Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco's Mission District on May 16, 2007, July mentioned that she is currently working on a new film. This film is tentatively titled "Satisfaction", and will include July in a lead role. Filming was scheduled to start in the Autumn of 2008.
She recorded her first EP for Kill Rock Stars in 1996, entitled Margie Ruskie Stops Time, with music by The Need. After that, she released two more full-length LPs, 10 Million Hours A Mile in 1997 and Binet-Simon Test in 1998, both released on Kill Rock Stars. In 1999 she made a split EP with IQU, released on K Records.
On their 2010 EP "Distractions", Australian band Regurgitator released a track titled "Miranda July" that talks of singer Quan Yeomans writing a letter to her.
July has acted in many of her own videos including Atlanta, The Amateurist, Nest of Tens, Are You The Favorite Person of Anyone?, and the film Me and You and Everyone We Know.
July has also made a small appearance in the film Jesus' Son and will be acting in her upcoming film Satisfaction.
In 1998, July made her first full-length multimedia performance piece, Love Diamond, in collaboration with composer Zac Love and with help from artist Jamie Isenstein; she called it a "live movie." She performed it at venues around the country, including the New York Video Festival, The Kitchen, and Yo-yo a Go-go in Olympia. She created her next major full-length performance piece, The Swan Tool, in 2000, also in collaboration with Love, with digital production work by Mitsu Hadeishi. She performed this piece in venues around the world, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
In 2006, after completing her first feature film, she went on to create another multimedia piece, Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely are Not Going To Talk About, which she performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.
Her short story The Boy from Lam Kien was published in 2005 by Cloverfield Press, as a special-edition book with illustration by Elinor Nissley and Emma Hedditch. Her next story, Something That Needs Nothing, was published in the September 18, 2006 issue of the New Yorker magazine. No One Belongs Here More Than You is a 224-page collection of her stories which was released on May 15, 2007. It won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award on September 24, 2007.
July is also the founder of the online arts community Learning to Love You More, founded with Harrell Fletcher and Yuri Ono. Established in 2002 the site provides assignments for amateur artists to complete and submit to take part in the communal arts project. Learning to Love You More also released a book of the online art in 2007.
Both a multimedia and performance piece, July launched the site "Your World of Text" [1], a grid web page where the public can post text anywhere on the page. July has released very little public information on this piece, other than a link that is posted on her official website.
July dated Radio Sloan from The Need when she first moved to Portland. She went on to date K Records founder Calvin Johnson. As of September 2005, July is dating artist/film director Mike Mills.
Johanna Fateman, of the post-punk band Le Tigre, has referred to July as being her "best friend from high school".
In a 2007 interview with Bust magazine, July spoke of the importance which feminism has had in her life, saying, "What's confusing about [being a feminist]? It's just being pro-your ability to do what you need to do. It doesn't mean you don't love your boyfriend or whatever...When I say 'feminist', I mean that in the most complex, interesting, exciting way!" Feministing
