Deborah Claymon is a fiction writer, essayist, journalist, editor, and media consultant. While trying to crack the code on her fiction projects, she works as a consultant, helping businesses and nonprofits with strategic media needs, and helping professionals translate their stories and ideas to many platforms. As a journalist, Deborah was a key part of the early editorial team at Red Herring magazine, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, and a managing editor for a CNET/CNBC television partnership. She has written for the New York Times, NPR Marketplace, Forbes, Fortune, Industry Standard, Stanford, Salon, Sunset, and many other publications. (Ask her about being the Bucharest Bureau Chief for the Central European Business Weekly.) Deborah recently published a series of short essays while revising her third novel. She helped lead the fiction review group for Francis Ford Coppola’s literary magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, and reviewed submissions for the Center for Fiction’s fellowship committee. She is a selected member of the SF Writer's Grotto. She has managed presenters (and read her work) at the Bay Area Book Festival. (Ask her about being a Jeopardy contestant in 2023.) In education, Deborah has taught at the high school level, worked as a member of the Stanford undergraduate and business school admission team, and as a consulting partner to secondary schools, notably The Davidson Academy, the first free public school for profoundly gifted middle and high school students located on the campus of the University of Nevada. As a volunteer, Deborah leads the scholarship work of the Napa Valley Community Foundation, redefining the program’s outreach, primarily to serve first-generation students graduating from Title 1 high schools. She is chair of the board of her local library, one of the few remaining independent libraries in the country. One of the highlights of her week is the two hours she spends as a trained AVID mentor for 8th graders. (Ask her why she loves middle schoolers.) Deborah holds a Bachelor's degree from Stanford, where she was the recipient of the Golden Medal of Excellence in 1992, and a Master's degree from Northwestern University, where she was awarded a doctoral fellowship. She loved playing college student again at the Yale Writers' Workshop in 2019.