Deborah Siegel-Acevedo
Evanston, IL
Nonfiction
Deborah Siegel-Acevedo, PhD is a nonfiction writer and a Visiting Scholar in Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (Palgrave Macmillan), co-editor of the literary anthology Only Child (Random House/Harmony), and a TEDx speaker. Her essays have appeared in TriQuarterly and in multiple anthologies. She has published op-eds and features in venues including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, CNN.com, The Forward, Kveller, Slate, The Huffington Post, The American Prospect, Ms., More, and Psychology Today. Her work has also been featured on The Today Show and in the New York Times.
A far slower writer in recent years, Deborah only makes true progress, it seems, at Ragdale, where the essays in the collection she is currently working on have been seeded (and for which she is extremely grateful).
Equally passionate in her role as an educator, Deborah has a penchant for creating “crossover” initiatives at the intersection of writing, community, and education. Most recently, as Inaugural Executive Director of Artists Book House, she professionalized the newly formed arts education nonprofit organization designed to help people tell their stories and transform their worlds into books.
Before that, she was the first coordinator of HumanitiesX, DePaul University’s Experiential Humanities Collaborative, where she supported diverse learning communities comprised of faculty, students, and community partners.
She is the founder of Bold Voice Collaborative, a network of creative professionals who joined together during the pandemic to foster a multiplicity of public narratives, as well as Girl Meets Voice, Inc., a boutique coaching firm that helps scholars and others find and sustain their creative life’s work.
Earlier in her career, Deborah co-founded Barnard University’s online journal The Scholar & Feminist Online; founded the group blog Girl w/Pen housed at The Society Pages; and cofounded SheWrites.com, the largest online community for women+ who write.
Deborah’s teaching credits span both the academic and non-academic worlds. She has taught personal narrative and TEDx-style speaking as an Adjunct Faculty Member in the College of Communication at DePaul University; creative nonfiction at the Northwestern University Summer Writing Conference and StoryStudio Chicago; and opinion and persuasive writing at academic institutions, nonprofits, and foundations nationwide as a Fellowship Director and Senior Facilitator with The OpEd Project.
Deborah received her doctorate in literary studies with a minor in feminist cultural studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in Evanston with her family, some cats, a lizard, and a Great Pyrenees who comes for frequent visits.