Hello.

I’m happy you’re here.

I’m Dein Sofley. This is my story.

I was raised in Southern California where suburbs hoed over orange trees. I wrote my first story, age seven, waiting for my mother’s workday to end.  She sold tract homes, perfectly groomed like her platinum blond hair. But what people paid for was happiness.

She died when I was thirteen. A stray, writing accommodates me. 

Grad school fostered my dedication to craft and gifted me a posse. I cinched a job as an editor, wrote a celebrity memoir, a novel, a play, and a lot of short stories. Some were published. Some were lost when I spilled a cup of coffee on my laptop. No backup. No matter. I keep writing.

I keep writing to figure out what I think and feel or to try to hold onto something. I keep writing because technology is expanding the boundaries of human expression and robots are rewiring us. I keep writing to get at some truth of what it is to be human.

Too often people lose a sense of who they are or forget what makes them extraordinary.

I like learning the stories people identify with and using the magic of language to transform them. I like discovering the stories that shape experience and helping people make the same discoveries because sometimes their story is my story. 

Credentials:  BA, Columbia College. MFA, Fiction, UC Riverside.