Photo by Julie Dermansky

Marcy Dermansky is the author of the novels Twins (2005) and Bad Marie, forthcoming from Harper Perennial in the summer of 2010.

Marcy always knew she wanted to be a writer. She began making up stories in elementary school, writing tales of sensitive standard poodles and a rebellious goldfish who wanted out of his school.

After graduating from Haverford College, she headed to San Francisco, only to discover that numerous young women with undergraduate degrees in English and dreams of writing fiction had the exact same idea. For five years, she moved up from unsatisfying temp jobs to unsatisfying full-time administrative work, before packing up and moving to the amazement of many (including a stunned UPS man) to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She received her MA in fiction at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Her first novel Twins was a NY Times Editors Choice Pick and a New York Public Library 2006 Selection of Books for the Teen Age. “Sometimes despairing, sometimes blackly humorous, always engrossing and thoroughly original. A wonderful debut,” proclaimed the Kirkus Review.

Marcy is the recipient fellowships from the the MacDowell Colony and the Edward Albee Ranch. She is the winner of the 2002 Smallmouth Press Andre Dubus Novella Award and the 1999 Story Magazine Carson McCullers short story prize. Her stories have been published in numerous literary journals, including “McSweeneys,” “The Alaska Quarterly Review,” and “The Indiana Review,” and included in the anthology “Love Stories: A Literary Companion to Tennis.”

Marcy serves as a board member of the online literary community Fictionaut. She is a film critic for About.com and belongs to the New York Online Film Critics. She lives in Astoria, New York.