Deborah Reber hails from Reading, Pennsylvania, a city best known as the home of the “Reading Railroad” from Monopoly and darned good pretzels.
Debbie graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Broadcast & Cable. (This was back in the stone ages when “cable television” was a new phenomenon…it got its own major!). After graduation, she moved to NYC to make it big in the world of broadcast news, just like Holly Hunter’s character in the movie by the same name. When that didn’t happen, she decided to save the world instead, and produced videos, PSAs and documentaries for CARE, UNICEF and the PBS show Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television.
While living in NYC, Debbie apparently decided that working fulltime didn’t keep her busy enough, so she simultaneously attended The New School for Social Research, where she earned her MA in Media Studies, with a focus on documentary and media criticism.
With even more student loans to pay off, Debbie left the world of nonprofit and jumped into children’s television, where she worked on Blue’s Clues for Nickelodeon and developed original programming for Cartoon Network. It was while working at Cartoon Network that she sold her first book, Run for Your Life: A Book for Beginning Women Runners, to Perigee Books in 2001.
Debbie loved the process of writing a book, and loved seeing her name in print even more, so in 2003, she turned in the key to her corporate office and traded it in for a lime green Ikea chair, an all-in-one desk unit and a tiny corner of the den to eke out a living as a fulltime writer…and she’s never looked back. (Okay, there was that one time she looked back, but that was a while ago, and since then, things have been going smashingly well).
Debbie has written a number of books for teens, tweens, and even preschoolers, including Chill: Stress-Reducing Techniques for a More Balanced, Peaceful You (Simon Pulse, 2008), In Their Shoes: Extraordinary Women Describe Their Amazing Careers (Simon Pulse, 2007), the teen series from Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Real Deal (HCI, 2005-2006), and more than a dozen Blue’s Clues books. She writes features for magazines including SIX78th and Discovery Girls and shares insights and advice for teen girls through her blog, Smart Girls Know (www.smartgirlsknow.com).
Debbie lives in Seattle with her strikingly handsome husband Derin, adorable little boy Asher and trusty, white German Shepherd, Baxter. She is a volunteer running coach with Girls on the Run, a Board Member of the Seattle Girls' School, and an advisory board member for the teen girl mentoring organization, WriteGirl. In her spare time she runs, hikes, plays the piano, gardens, and sings.
© 2003-2007 Deborah Reber
