Deborah Painter

Deborah Painter has been writing since the age of five, dictating stories to her parents and illustrating the stories with comical animals in crayon. Later, she graduated to notebook paper and construction paper bound together with yarn. Magazines proved capable of getting her work out to a bigger readership than the construction paper and yarn efforts.

May 2025 marked her 357th publication. Deborah has written extensively for Rock & Gem (USA), Classic Images (USA) Monster Bash Magazine (USA), Deposits (UK), Scary Monsters Magazine (USA), Nostalgia Digest (USA), Rockwatch the Magazine for Young Geologists (UK), Geology Today (UK), ImagineMag! A South African Arts and Culture Magazine (South Africa), Wildest Westerns (USA), Big Reel (USA), RetroFan (USA) and various scientific journals, among a few examples of many. Her biography of Forrest J Ackerman, the science fiction genre legend, received Honorable Mention for Book of the Year in the 2010 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. Her first book, Hollywood's Top Dogs: The Dog Hero in Film, a 2008 publication of Midnight Marquee Press, was nominated for a Library of Virginia literary award that year. A 2022 article for Scary Monsters Magazine, "Those Lucky Gorillas and Their Jungle Girls", was nominated for a Rondo Award, as was "The Sinister Circuitry of the Twonky" in a 2024 issue.

Deborah has appeared in two documentaries on the subject of classic science fiction and horror films: Virginia Creepers: The Horror Host Tradition in the Old Dominion, and Midnight Madness, which won the Rondo Classic Horror Award for Best Documentary for 2011. More documentaries are to be released. She has worked in the field of environmental science as an ecologist for 32 years. Deborah is ably assisted in her writing related journeys here and there in America by her friend David Hawk, a freelance professional photographer.

She is available for DVD commentary and interviews, and lectures on film history, geology and ecology.