Fran Dorf

Fran Dorf was born in a Philadelphia suburb in 1953. As a teenager, she read constantly, particularly science fiction, and wrote poetry and stories; she began working on a novel at age sixteen. She also sketched and painted, and studied piano for many years. After graduating from Boston University’s School of Public Communication in 1975, she worked variously as a waitress, secretary, exercise instructor, publisher for a small startup newspaper, nursing home attendant, public relations executive, advertising writer, therapist, and fund-raiser.

While Dorf has never studied creative writing in a formal setting, she believes her eclectic and voracious reading habits have helped her tremendously in her writing as has her powerful fascination with psychology. Indeed in 1985 she received a master’s degree in psychology from New York University. Five years later she published her first novel, A Reasonable Madness, a psychological thriller about a psychiatrist and one of his patients. A second novel, Flight, followed in 1992. Both were Literary Guild selections and received critical acclaim in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere.