Patrick Dearen Biography
A Texas Literary Hall of Fame member and author of twenty-nine books, Patrick Dearen was born in 1951 and grew up in the small West Texas town of Sterling City. He earned a bachelor of journalism from The University of Texas at Austin in 1974 and received nine national and state awards as a reporter for two West Texas daily newspapers.
An authority on the Pecos and Devils rivers of Texas, Dearen also has gained recognition for his knowledge of old-time cowboy life. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he preserved the firsthand accounts of 76 men who cowboyed before 1932. These interviews, along with decades of archival study, have enriched Dearen’s nineteen novels and led to ten nonfiction books.
His newest novels are Halloween on the Butterfield Trail, a middle grade novel set in North Texas in 1860; and The Big Dry, a Western Writers of America Spur Award finalist and a stand-alone sequel to The Big Drift, which received the 2015 Spur Award for best western traditional novel. His other recent fiction releases are Grizzly Moon (Spur Award finalist), The End of Nowhere (Peacemaker Award finalist), Haunted Border (Elmer Kelton Award), and Apache Lament (Will Rogers Gold Medallion). His other novels include Dead Man’s Boot (Peacemaker Award finalist), When Cowboys Die (Spur Award finalist), To Hell or the Pecos (Elmer Kelton Award), and The Illegal Man, a modern-day western about illegal immigration. For the background of two other novels, Perseverance and When the Sky Rained Dust, Dearen turned to Depression-era Texas.
Dearen has also been honored by Western Fictioneers, Academy of Western Artists, San Antonio Conservation Society, West Texas Historical Association, and New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A backpacking enthusiast and ragtime pianist, he makes his home in Midland, Texas with his wife Mary.
Patrick Dearen’s remarks upon his induction into Texas Literary Hall of Fame in 2022 on YouTube
Interview with Patrick on In Search of the West Texas Wordsmith (Air date: 7/13/2019)