Debra Dean’s best-selling novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Borders Original Voice, #1 Booksense Pick, Booklist Top Ten Novel, and an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year. It has been published in 17 languages, and has become a perennial favorite of book groups. Her critically acclaimed short fiction, collected in Confessions of a Falling Woman, has won awards including the AWP Intro Journals Award, the bronze medal for General Fiction in the Florida Book Awards, and the Nelson Bentley Prize.
A former actress in the New York theater, Dean is a warm and seasoned speaker and has delighted and inspired audiences at museums, conferences, universities, libraries, literary festivals, and women’s groups all around the country. Echoing themes in her fiction, her topics range from the glories of Russia’s Hermitage Museum to the joys and perils of a life in the arts.
Born and raised in Seattle, the daughter of a builder and an artist, Dean was a compulsive reader but never imagined becoming a writer. “I read Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jane Austen, and the Brontes . . . I rarely read anyone who hadn’t been dead for at least 50 years, so it never occurred to me that writing novels was something that people still did. I think subconsciously I figured you needed to have been born in the 19th century, have three names or at the very least a British accent. No, I decided I wanted to tell other people’s stories on the stage. My parents, bless them, encouraged me to pursue this dream, no matter how naïve it must have seemed.”
After college, Dean moved to New York and spent two years at The Neighborhood Playhouse, a professional actor’s training program. She went on to work in the New York and regional theater for nearly a decade and met her future husband when they were cast as brother and sister in A.R. Gurney’s play The Dining Room.
In 1990, Dean moved back to the northwest, got her M.F.A. at the University of Oregon, and began a new chapter of life, writing and teaching at colleges and universities. She and her husband of 21 years live in Miami, where she teaches creative writing. She is at work on a new novel set in the reign of Catherine of Great.
Praise for Debra Dean:
“Debra Dean’s event for Arts & Letters Live, the literary series at the Dallas Museum of Art, was one of the true highlights of our 2007 season. More than 300 people packed our auditorium to hear her share her creative process in writing The Madonnas of Leningrad. Debra is an amazingly talented writer and an equally compelling speaker. She brought the story to life just as vividly from the stage as she did on the page; her training as an actor has honed her ability to connect effectively with audiences. The themes of art and the power of memory genuinely struck a chord with our audiences, and I know this event lingered in their own minds long after it was over. They raved about it for months afterward.”
— Carolyn Bess, Director, Arts & Letters Live, Dallas Museum of Art
“Debra Dean was invited to participate as one of three faculty members at the Winter Fishtrap Gathering held from February 22-24, 2008. The theme of the conference was “Living Right: Empathy, Charity, and Responsibility.” We invited Debra because we believed that her book, Madonnas of Leningrad, spoke well to the topic of empathy. Our expectations were exceeded. Not only did the book itself strike a chord with attendees, but Debra’s reading of the book was articulate and powerful. Some writers read their work poorly. Debra’s reading was masterful. Her subsequent participation in panel discussions and small group break-out sessions was generous, well-informed, egalitarian, and, in a word, empathetic. We would be delighted to have Debra Dean back as a Fishtrap presenter in the future.”
— Rick Bombaci, Executive Director, Fishtrap, Inc.
Praise For The Madonnas of Leningrad
“Dean writes with passion and compelling drama.”
—People Magazine
“[A] hearfelt debut . . .Admirably humane in its determination to restore the dignity Alzheimer’s strips away. What’s more, it largely avoids the sentimentality that mars so much writing about the old and infirm.”
—New York Times Book Review
“A novel that dares to be beautiful— and fully succeeds.”
—The Daily Mail (London)
“Rare is the novel that creates that blissful forgot-you-were-reading experience. This sort of transcendence is rarer still when the novel in question is an author's debut, but that is precisely what Debra Dean has achieved with her image-rich book…”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“This sumptuously elegant and emotionally moving first novel . . . will linger with you long after you’ve finished it . . . Exhilarating fiction . . .luminous and lovely throughout.”
—Providence Journal
“[A] remarkable first novel first novel about the consolation of memory . . . One of the pleasures of this novel, besides the splendid, understated writing and the insight Dean offers into surviving at all costs through inhuman conditions, is that after I’d finished the book I felt as though I’d had a long visit to the Hermitage, wandering through its unrivaled collection.”
— NPR, Nancy Pearl Book Review
“[Dean’s] descriptive passages and dialogue are painteresque and exquisitely drawn.”
—USA Today
Praise For Confessions of a Falling Woman:
“Smart… gritty and real… Debra Dean’s new collection is proof that the [short-story] form can capture gripping, neurotic or darkly funny slices of life in a way that illuminates the modern experience on a broader level.”
—Chicago Tribune
“An attractive wry humor ripples through this collection of 10 stories… Dean has a fine appreciation for the way chance can save or doom careers and marriages. More, please.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Readers will certainly forget themselves in these sparkling stories, pausing over small, strange moments that change entire lives.”
—Publishers Weekly
“. . .a stunning collection of stories… Characters are drawn subtly, with just enough detail to let the reader feel the personality, and the story is allowed to carry the characters to its conclusion.”—Library Journal
“Lyrically written stories... that make a lasting impression.”
—The Seattle Times
“Without being preachy, Dean has something to say… The writing in this collection... compels in an almost hypnotic kind of way, drawing us into these well-crafted moments from 10 imagined lives.”
—The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC)