Amber Dermont
“Writers are lucky to have readers and grateful for the time and care their readers take to enter the world of their novels. I think the best a writer can hope for is that a reader feels an intimate connection with the characters and story. I know that when I read, I try to suspend all judgment and empathize with the choices the characters make.”
New York Times-bestselling author Amber Dermont is a fiction writer whose characters come vividly to life through their passions, struggles, and triumphs - often in rigid environments marked by privilege and unequal power dynamics. Her bestselling novel The Starboard Sea exemplifies her unparalleled skill for creating immersive worlds in her fiction, inhabited by complex, tender and utterly alive characters. Described in the New York Times as "A rich, quietly artful novel that is bound for deep water, with questions of beauty, power and spiritual navigation as its main concerns. The title refers not to the right side of a boat but to the right course through life, and the immense difficulty of finding and following it."
“With unflinching wit, Amber Dermont examines the harsh vicissitudes of life, and though the worlds she creates are often unsettling places, her sense of detail always makes for a pleasurable read. There is a vibrant lucidity to her language, a daring music. . .Her characters are simultaneously able to articulate their pain, pass judgment on their own behavior, and pardon themselves for their transgressions.” ―Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize and Orange Prize winning author of Gilead and Home
Dermont is also the author of Damage Control, a short story collection that further explores themes of power dynamics and individuals at a crossroads, set against backdrops that come to life with her uncanny eye for detail. Throughout the collection “a poetic tension between apathy and emotion that makes for an unsettling, provocative, and worthwhile read” (Elle Magazine)
Dermont is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and holds a PhD in Literature and Creative writing from the University of Houston. Her work has appeared in many major literary journals, as well as anthologies including Best New American Voices, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Worst Years of Your Life and Home of the Brave: Stories in Uniform. She teaches creative writing at Rice University in Houston, Texas.