Thomas Dean

Thomas Dean is dedicated to working with others to discover, understand, and express the “wild soul” in all of us: how our authenticity and life purpose are intertwined with our relationships with the more-than-human world. He has taught and facilitated through numerous community programs and organizations, including the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the Iowa City Senior Center, Prairiewoods Franciscan Ecospirituality Center, Porchlight Literary Arts Center, Harvest Preserve, and the Prairie Retreat. He is a trained Land Ethic Leader through the Aldo Leopold Foundation, bringing programs on Leopold and the land ethic to libraries and nature centers across Iowa. Thomas earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and music history and literature and has taught at multiple colleges and universities in the Midwest.

Thomas’s books include Under a Midland Sky and Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of the Prairie Spirit (co-authored with Cindy Crosby), both from Ice Cube Press, and he has published numerous essays in national and regional academic and general audience publications. He also edited The Grace of Grass and Water, a collection of essays on the late Minnesota author Paul Gruchow, also from Ice Cube Press.

Thomas has served on a number of boards of cultural and civic organizations, including the Iowa City Public Library (for which he served two terms as president), Humanities Iowa (the statewide humanities council), FilmScene (Iowa City), and the State Historical Society, Inc., of Iowa.

Thomas and his wife, Susan Prepejchal, have two adult children, and they are adoptive parents of four senior dogs.