Once I had started, I discovered the secret pleasure of writing a novel. It's such an immersive, deep commitment. With short stories, you're continua…

- Debra Dean

I haven't written anything yet that makes me think, This is it! and I don't imagine I ever will. I don't know how it is with you, but when I finish s…

- Debra Dean

If anything, I've found nonfiction a little easier. You don't have to make anything up. Of course, that's the inherent difficulty as well: when you h…

- Debra Dean

With the historical fictions, I was already doing so much research, and so much of the stories was anchored by historical truth that the move to nonf…

- Debra Dean

Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose…

- Debra Dean

I kept writing short stories and sending out my manuscript, and it kept coming back like a bad penny. It was rejected all over town, quite often in v…

- Debra Dean

Before I got my present job, I spent many years teaching writing part-time, so-called, at community colleges and universities. It's academia's versio…

- Debra Dean

If you had told me twenty years ago that I would write a novel set in Russia, much less two, I simply wouldn't have believed you. I had no familiarit…

- Debra Dean

The trajectory of my writing has moved further and further away from autobiography. My first stories in Confessions of a Falling Woman worked familia…

- Debra Dean