Patty Dann
American writer
Patty Dann (born October 30, 1953) is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. She studied at the University of Oregon, and later earned an MFA in writing from Columbia University. While working at the A&E network in 1986, she revised Mermaids, a coming-of-age novel she had written as her master's thesis, which was subsequently published by Ticknor and Fields. It was later made into a feature film of the same name in 1990.
Dann is also the author of the novels The Wright Sister (2020), Sweet & Crazy (2003), and Starfish (2013), the latter of which is a sequel to Mermaids. She has also written nonfiction works, including The Butterfly Hours: Transforming Memories into Memoir, The Baby Boat: A Memoir of Adoption (1998), focusing on the adoption of her son, and The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss (2007), which reflected on the death of her husband.
Early life and education
Dann was born on October 30, 1953, in New York City to Joanne (née Himmell) and Michael Dann, a comedy writer-turned-television executive at NBC and CBS. She has one brother, Jonathan, and a sister, Priscilla. Dann was raised in Chappaqua, New York.
After graduating high school, Dann enrolled at Bennington College, but left after her freshman year, transferring to the University of Oregon, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history. While attending the University of Oregon, she studied under writer Ralph Salisbury, whom she later cited as a major influence on her writing.
The public source identifies “Patty Dann” as american writer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Patty, Dann and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7148703. VIAF identifies the subject as 10050206. The Library of Congress control number is n85268708. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1986, 1990 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Patty Dann” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.