Deb writes for adults and children, and is also an editor and photographer. Her short fiction, reviews, and photos have appeared in Threepenny Review, The Boston Sunday Globe, Seventeen, Washington Post Book World, The Chicago Sun-Times, Stories, Cicada, The Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomsbury Review, The Boston Review, The Sun, and other publications.

She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. She has taught writing and literature at Emerson College and Western New England College, and was a Visiting Writer in Lesley University’s MFA in Writing for Young People program.

Deb is a regular faculty presenter at retreats and conferences, as both author and editor — including Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ weekends in Alaska, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin as well as events for the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Maine State Writers Alliance, The Pacific Coast Children's Writers and Illustrators Workshop, The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Writers Web New England, and others. In September 2007, Deb was honored as one of the Boston Public Library's Literary Lights for Children.

Born in California, Deb spent her early years as a “military brat,” living also in Maryland, Virginia, and all over Massachusetts. Over the years she’s worked all manner of day jobs to support the fiction writing habit — from bartender and book reviewer to children’s book editor and zookeeper. She's proud to report she's the only person she knows who’s been bitten by a dwarf lemur. "Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey were my idols growing up, and if I had another life to live (I imagine it often, this parallel life), I’d be a field biologist or trek around photographing invertebrates for National Geographic. I wanted rugged adventure, a wild and rambling, get-dirty sort of life, but ended up in a fairly settled way instead, raising a family I cherish and making up stories in my pajamas. Nature and restlessness do crop up in my writing as favorite themes though, so nothing’s lost, and reading and writing continue to be the adventure of a lifetime.”

Deb lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with her husband and their two children, Clyde and Michaela. She’s at work on several new projects, including another adult historical novel.

Photo © 2008 Lisa Goodfellow Bowe