After earning her Masters in Counseling Psychology, Deborah Lynn Jacobs worked as a counselor at a community college in Ontario. After ten years, she and her husband and children moved to the isolated northern town of Kenora, Ontario.
There, she taught college courses in psychology as well as pre-employment and job search skills, and freelanced for three newspapers and several community magazines. She later moved to Wisconsin, and now writes full time. She lives with her husband, and two pet skinks named Frank and Tigger.
Deborah’s first attempts at writing novels constituted what she calls her “apprenticeship period.” These attempts now reside in the depths of a deep, dark drawer, where they belong.
Her published books for teen readers are Choices (Roaring Brook, 2007) the YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, finalist for the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic and Nominee, Stellar Book Awards (British Columbia’s teen choice award); Powers, Roaring Brook, 2006 (hardcover); Square Fish, 2008 (paperback) YALSA Quick Pick nominee and Sunburst Award, Honorable Mention; The Same Difference (Royal Fireworks, 2000) about which Midwest Book Review, 2001 said “Jacobs has painted a realistic, unusual portrait of Asperger’s syndrome.”
Deborah is currently working on a novel that she describes as a dystopia. It takes place in a future not so different from our present.
When not writing, Deborah enjoys mucking around in her perennial flowerbeds, creating unusual (and usually spicy) dishes, camping, canoeing and rambling through the woods. She is a voracious reader, and has resorted to reading toothpaste tubes or shampoo bottle ingredients if no other reading material is available!