Dean Bakopoulos’ first novel, Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon, was a New York Times Notable Book; he co-wrote and co-produced the film adaptation, which debuted at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was a New York Times Critics’ Pick. His second novel, My American Unhappiness, was named one of the year’s best novels by The Chicago Tribune, and his third novel, Summerlong, was an independent bookstore bestseller and is now in development as a television series.
The winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as NEA fellowships in both fiction (2006) and creative nonfiction (2016), Bakopoulos is writer-in-residence at Grinnell College and also teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program and at the University of Iowa. He divides his time between Iowa and Los Angeles with his wife and occasional writing partner, Alissa Nutting, and their three kids. He is also co-writer and executive producer of the television series based on Alissa’s novel, Made for Love, for HBO MAX, premiering in 2021; he is also developing another original television project, The Off Weeks, based on the short story In The Pines. Bakopoulos and Nutting are co-directors of the Writers@Grinnell reading series.
Bakopoulos received his BA from the University of Michigan and his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to teaching fiction and creative nonfiction workshops at Grinnell, Dean has taught creative writing at UW-Madison and at Iowa State University. The winner of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Dean also reviews books for The New York Times Book Review and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Bakopoulos also produces a newsletter, No Soul, No Dark Nights.