Daren Dean

Daren Dean is the author of the novel Far Beyond the Pale (2015) , I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Gone: Stories (2019), The Black Harvest: A Novel of the American Civil War (2021), and This Vale of Tears (2021).

His novel ROADS is forthcoming in 2023. Of Roads, Ron Rash wrote, "From the opening page, Daren Dean propels the reader into his story and never taps the brakes as his characters move toward an inevitable reckoning. Dannie Gail Posey is the novel’s young heroine, and we cheer her on as she navigates a violent world that seeks to entrap her even as she dreams of escaping it. Roads confirms Daren Dean as an important new voice in rural noir."

"His work lines up alongside authors such as Larry Brown, Daniel Woodrell and S.A. Cosby. And while his prose bears a different style, Dean borrows a key element from Cormac McCarthy: their books are shot through with a common confession, that this world — and all the creatures in it — run wild. Whether that wildness proves brutal or beautiful depends on a person's ability to understand and harness its energy."--The Columbia Tribune

Dean has been featured in Bloom, Huffpost, Kirkus Reviews, Ploughshares, and The Columbia Tribune. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. The Black Harvest has been nominated for the Pen/Faulkner, the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, and shortlisted for the Missouri Author Award. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Lincoln University of Missouri. He now lives in Missouri with his wife, Cassie, and children.