Deborah Prum began her writing career at seven years old. Perched atop a chrome kitchen chair, she pecked out stories on her mother’s Royal typewriter. Every plot contained a similar theme.
At the onset, some disaster, (plane crash, rampant disease, ravaging insects) took the lives of parents and all other authority figures. The kids had to collect wild berries to eat and skin rabbits to make clothing. Without exception, by the end of each tale, the sturdy little survivors had created a Utopia and lived blissfully ever after. Unfortunately, it did not occur to Deb’s parents to call a child psychologist.
Prum’s award-winning fiction has been published in many journals and anthologies, including the Virginia Quarterly Review, Streetlight Magazine, The Sweetbay Review, Dartmouth Medical School Literary Journal, and Across the Margin. Her humorous essays have aired on NPR-member stations and have been published by several newspapers and journals, including the Washington Post and Medium. Her non-fiction has appeared in several publications including the Huffington Post, Brevity, Ladies’ Home Journal, Southern Living, The Writer, and The Writer’s Handbook. She’s written funny, anecdotal histories for young adults, including Rats, Bulls, and Flying Machines: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation and Czars & Czarinas, the First Nine Centuries of Russian History. She teaches at WriterHouse where she gives workshops on the craft of writing. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia where she plays banjo and mandolin in a way that makes her family wish she’d try quieter instruments.
