Deb Rhodes

When I was a teenager longing with desperation to make my creative mark on the world, my father, an artist, told me that writers are artists who create through the medium of words on paper. This delighted me to no end. I’d never thought of myself as an artist before, though I’d been earnestly painting portraits with words on paper since the age of seven.

Through the years of being a single mom to five sons, I never allowed my dreams and talent to die out. I wrote late at night while the kids slept or scribbled in my car during lunchtimes at work. While staring unseeingly at my laundry tumbling in dryers at depressing laundromats, I composed stories in my head while attempting to keep an eye on my rambunctious sons. Something compelled me to write down what I saw and experienced and heard, for unless it was formed in written words life didn’t seem quite real to me.


2019 finds me Nana to seven beautiful grand-kids. With the time I need now to wholeheartedly pursue the writing dreams put on hold for so long, I’ve published a book of poems, Brightwood Street Chronicles. There is also a childhood memoir in the works, as well as a couple of novels whose characters seem to have taken up permanent residence in my imagination and heart.