Dorothy Weil

Dorothy Weil has been writing stories and drawing since she was four-years old, living on a steamboat on the Missouri River at Omaha Nebraska. She is the granddaughter and daughter of steamboat captains on one side of her family and of Cincinnati Germans on the other. In a perpatetic childhood that took her her from various river banks and inner city neighborhoods to swanky hotels, she attended some thirteen schools, then landed in Cincinnati where she has spent the greater part of her life. She now lives in an apartment in Cincinnati with a constantly changing view of the Ohio River. She earned degrees at the University of Chicago, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and the University of Cincinnati, where she finished with a doctorate in American Literature. She has taught at the University of Cincinnati and Edgecliff College, creating special courses in women’s literature and black literature.

Perhaps the breadth of her experience and her interest in both writing and art account for the fact that she has been unusually versatile. In addition to four novels, Weil has published a memoir, short stories, some hundred-fifty articles for magazines and newspapers, a collection of poetry, and a book about America’s first best-selling author, Susanna Rowson. She has also written and co-produced many television documentaries, including a prize-winning series about America’s rivers. She has contributed humor columns and art reviews to Cincinnati Magazine, , which twice voted her "Best Feminist Author."

In addition to a crowded life homemaking and raising children, learning, teaching and constant reading, Weil’s influences have been movies and art museums: she has been a devotee of both since the age of four, paints when she has the time, and is still an enthusiastic movie fan. Her unique fictional style has evolved from these influences in that she creates a strong narrative carried along by visually clear scenes with plentiful interaction and dialogue. Weil likes to write in both a light and serious vein.