Daren Dean is the author of eight books, Far Beyond the Pale (Fiction Southeast Press). I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Gone: Stories (Cowboy Jamboree Press), The Black Harvest: A Novel of the American Civil War (University of West Alabama's Livingston Press), This Vale of Tears (CJ Press), Roads (CJ Press), The New Salvation and Other Stories (CJ Press), Lovesick, a prose chapbook (Louisiana Literature Press), and Shelter Me, A Novel (UWA Livingston Press, Scheduled for an October 24, 2025 pub date). He earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The Black Harvest was nominated for the Pen/Faulkner, the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, and Midlands Author Award. Roads was a featured Indie review in Kirkus Reviews in 2023. Dean is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lincoln University of Missouri. He lives in Missouri with his wife and children.