Biography

Deanne Stillman is a widely published, critically acclaimed writer and playwright. Her books of literary nonfiction include Blood Brothers (Kirkus starred review, excerpted in Newsweek, now under option; about Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill in the Wild West Show); Desert Reckoning (about a latter-day hermit in the Mojave outside LA and his fatal collision with an LA County sheriff, with cops staging at a convent and culminating in a shoot-out under a full moon; based on a Rolling Stone piece, winner of the Spur and LA Press Club Award, Southwest Book of the Year, amazon editors pick, praised in Kirkus, Newsweek, LA Review of Books, Denver Post and elsewhere); Mustang, (an LA Times "best book of the year" in audio with Frances Fisher, Anjelica Huston, Richard Portnow, and John Densmore; launched the ongoing convo about wild horses in the West), and Twentynine Palms (a cult classic that Hunter THompson called "A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer," about kids who live in the desert during and post-Gulf War - and what happened to two of them). The Optionist has described Desert Reckoning as "a backlist gem" with elements of "Breaking Bad and Euphoria." Deanne's films include the forthcoming short, "Marilyn Monroe Flees Her Crypt When Hugh Hefner Is Buried Next Door," produced by Butcher Bird Studios, starring Shayne Eastin, and directed by Lillian Diaz-Przybyl. Her plays include "Reflections in a D'Back's Eye," directed by Darrell Larson at Highways in LA shortly before the pandemic. It won various prizes around the country and a monologue from it appears in Best Men's Stage Monologues 2021 (Smith & Kraus). Also directed by Darrell was her short, "Billy the Kid and Lee Harvey Oswald Praise Citizenship in the American Dreamtime," produced on Zoom for Highways.
- IMDb mini biography by: Deanne Stillman