DEBRA DEAN : A BIOGRAPHY

Debra Dean was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She majored in English and Drama at Whitman College in Walla Walla after which she moved to New York City. After a first career on the New York stage, she returned to the Pacific Northwest to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. The Madonnas of Leningrad, her bestselling debut novel, began as a short story and was researched and written off and on over the course of ten summers in Seattle. It went on to be a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Borders Original Voice, a #1 Booksense Pick, a Booklist Top Ten Novel and an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year. It has been published in seventeen languages. Her subsequent collection of short stories, Confessions of a Falling Woman (2008), won the Paterson Fiction Prize and a Florida Book Award. A second novel,The Mirrored World, is due out in summer 2012. She and her husband, poet Clifford Paul Fetters, now live in Miami, where she teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University.

"If All of Rochester Read the Same Book..." "If All of Rochester..." 2012 Index Calendar of Events Introduction Debra Dean : A Biography A Conversation with Debra Dean Discussion Points for Readers of The Madonnas of Lenigrad Related Books of Interest Tips for Book Discussions Download the Readers Guide and Events Calendar as a PDF Madonnas Of Leningrad Teaching Resources Return to Main Page   Support for “If All of Rochester Read the Same Book…” comes from The New York State Council on the Arts and The National Endowment for the Arts. Local support provided by Flower City Printing; The Fred and Floy Willmott Foundation; Boylan Code, LLP; Canandaigua National Bank; Federated Clover Investment Advisors; Harris Beach, LLP; Rivers Run; The Bonadio Group; and Fairport Savings Bank.                   The Fred & Floy Willmot Foundation

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