Dede Fox

Dede Fox blames her parents for her love of language. When she was little, they insisted upon reading Shakespeare to her, along with the Pokey Little Puppy, The Little Engine That Could, and first editions of the L. Frank Baum Oz series.

The poetry bug bit Dede when she was sixteen and heard a bearded Alan Ginsburg reading his work at Holmes Lounge, a coffee house on the Washington University campus in St. Louis. Dede later attended that college, where she interviewed Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov for the school paper. One of her favorite college memories is visiting with Pete Seeger while he tuned his guitar in the Holmes Lounge kitchen where she worked. And although Tennessee Williams dropped out of “Wash U”., Dede managed to graduate with an English degree and a teacher’s certificate.

An educator, Dede taught elementary school for 22 years and was an intermediate school librarian for 18 more. She is now the NEA/DOJ Writer in Residence at the Bryan Federal Prison Camp for Women. Through Houston’s Writers in the Schools program, she also writes with oncology/hematology patients at Texas Children’s Hospital.