Deborah Packer

Deborah has a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Speech and Drama from the University of Michigan where she received a Professional Theatre Program Acting Fellowship, working with the APA Repertory Company and the American Conservatory Theatre in their days on the Ann Arbor campus. Her first professional job was as Helen Hayes' daughter in a production of RIGHT YOU ARE by Pirandello. She has worked as an actress on stage, film and TV in Toronto and Los Angeles, written and performed sketch comedy in NY and LA including the Comedy Store and Comic Strip, and wrote two screenplays. I'LL REMEMBER YOU is her first novel, also currently repped in Hollywood as a screenplay. Based on true family events, its a 1943 home front love story told in the shadow of the antisemitism and racism of the time - An idealistic, proud, small town Jewish girl and a Jewish soldier from Brooklyn, with horrific memories of a childhood in war torn Poland during World War 1, struggle thru a hasty marriage, misunderstanding, and the uncertainty of war in a country fighting for democracy abroad but facing deep seated hate and intolerance at home. Deborah's work with the American Jewish Committee, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry and teaching about the Holocaust at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, helped her explore more thoroughly, in novel form, the heavy hate and prejudice that was going on in the U.S. during that period, especially as it affected her own family.