Deanne Stillman is a widely published, acclaimed writer. Her books of literary nonfiction include Blood Brothers (which received a starred review in Kirkus, was excerpted in Newsweek, and won the Ohioana Book Award); Desert Reckoning (winner of the Spur, LA Press Club, and Southwest Book of the Year Awards, an amazon editors pick, based on a Rolling Stone piece, recipient of raves in Newsweek and Kirkus); Mustang (an LA Times "best book of the year," silver medalist for the California Book Award, starred review in Publishers Weekly, in audio with Frances Fisher, Anjelica Huston, John Densmore, James Morrison), and Twentynine Palms (an LA Times "best book of the year" which Hunter Thompson called "A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer").

Her essays have appeared in the LA Review of Books, NY Times, Tin House, and LA Times, and they have been cited as "Notable" in three editions of Best American Essays. Her plays have won prizes and been produced around the country and she was a founding nonfiction professor in the UC Riverside Low-Residency MFA Creative Writing Program where she taught for thirteen years.