GENDER & SEXUALITY STUDIES PROGRAM

Deborah Siegel-Acevedo, PhD is a writer, coach, and educator with 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.

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 co-founded 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; opinion and persuasive writing at academic institutions, nonprofits, and foundations nationwide as a Fellowship Director and Senior Facilitator with The OpEd Project; author platform at the Ragdale Foundation and Mediabistro; and more.

Deborah is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (Palgrave Macmillan), co-editor of Only Child (Harmony/Random House), and a TEDx speaker (“Learn from Kids to Embrace Paradox - Get Out of Your Binary Zone”). She has published essays in TriQuarterly and in multiple anthologies as well as op-eds and features on gender and politics in venues including: The Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN.com, The Forward, Kveller, Slate, The Huffington Post, The American Prospect, Ms., More, and Psychology Today. Deborah’s work has also been featured on The Today Show and in the New York Times. Deborah received her doctorate in literary studies with a minor in feminist cultural studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught composition; media, politics, and culture; feminist theory; and core courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century English and American literature. She lives in Evanston with her family, some cats, a lizard, and a visiting Great Pyrenees.