Deanna Fei
Deanna Fei is the author of the new memoir GIRL IN GLASS (Bloomsbury), hailed as “extraordinarily beautiful” by NPR and “an impassioned, important book” by the Washington Post. GIRL IN GLASS was recently featured on PBS NewsHour, Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, and NPR’s All Things Considered, among other outlets.
In 2014, Fei's essay, “My Baby and AOL’s Bottom Line,” went viral worldwide and sparked national conversations about medical privacy, corporate accounting, employer-sponsored health care, and what a human life is worth. She appeared on NBC’s the Today show, the CBS Evening News, CNN’s Erin Burnett Show, MSNBC’s News Nation, and NPR’s Here and Now to discuss her decision to speak about her “distressed baby.”
Fei currently works with March of Dimes to help raise awareness of the true tolls of prematurity and Graham’s Foundation to help advocate for parents of premature babies. She recently founded OurDistressedBabies.org, a forum where people can share their own stories to raise awareness of the need for more compassion and justice in our healthcare system.
Fei is also the author of the award-winning novel A Thread of Sky (Penguin, 2010). She was born in Flushing, New York, and graduated from Amherst College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has received a Fulbright Grant and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, TIME, Fortune, Slate, The Millions, and the Huffington Post, among other publications.
Fei has taught and counseled at-risk youth through the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, CASES, and New York City public schools. She regularly gives talks at forums such as the Museum of Chinese in America, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference, the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest, and schools and universities nationwide. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
“A love gone bad, a sea of bitterness: such an everyday thing. As ordinary as the tide, and perhaps as relentless. But tides turned, too.”
“Here it was like wind or rain, a sign of the seasons, just part of the weather-- another element of this country that took hold of her, even as it eluded her grasp”
“And a blank page was quite beautiful on its own, she'd found. There were already so many words, so many voices in the world. She flinched at contributing to the cacophony.”