Breaking news: King def. author James Campbell (The Ghost Mountain Boys), 6-1, 6-1; 6-0, 3-2, ret. at James River Writers Conference. Campbell sells more books than he gets first serves in and considers Richmond a success.

A native of Richmond, Virginia, who kicked around New York City for a decade, Dean King is an award-winning author of nonfiction books. His most recent,  Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival, published by Little, Brown in 2004, tells the story of  Connecticut sea captain James Riley and the crew of the merchant brig Commerce, who were shipwrecked on the West Coast of Africa in 1815 and enslaved by Arab nomads. Featured in Time magazine and on NPR and serialized in National Geographic Adventure, Skeletons on the Zahara was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon.com, and other publications. A  two-hour special documentary based on  Skeletons and created by Wildeyes Productions aired on the History Channel  in October 2006. A national best-seller, the book has been translated into ten foreign languages.

                A former contributing editor to Men's Journal, Dean has writen for  Esquire, Travel & Leisure, New York Magazine and the New York Times,  among others. His books include the highly acclaimed, best-selling Patrick O'Brian companion books A Sea of Words (1995), Harbors and High Seas (1996) and  Every Man Will Do His Duty (1997). His biography Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed (2000) was a Daily Telegraph book of the year.  

                Following a battle with cancer (Hodgkin's disease) at age twenty-nine, Dean created a book  Cancer Combat (Bantam, 1998), which he co-authored with his wife Jessica Cobb King and another cancer survivor. The book gives practical hard-hitting advice for both patients and their helpers in facing the challenges of beating cancer.

              From 1997-2000, Dean edited the Heart of Oak Sea Classics series published by Henry Holt, which included fiction and non-fiction books about the Age of Fighting Sail, with new introductions and annotation. The series included such authors as Joseph Conrad, James Fenimore Cooper, Frederick Marryat, and James Norman Hall.   Captain Richard Bailey of HMS Rose once noted that: “Like a great explorer of nautical literary archeology, King leads us on a journey of rediscovery into the past – back to a time before O'Brian, before Forester – to the founding authors of a great literary tradition.”

 An avid hiker, Dean likes to clear his mind on cross-country treks. He writes: “I took my first major walk—190 miles coast to coast in England—in 1986 after escaping a tedious temporary job as sales clerk in a London Tie-Rack. The job made the open air all the more glorious, even if the cloud ceiling was about head high almost every day. Ever since then, my friend, Rob, an English investment banker, and I plan walks whenever we can.  Various friends sign on for these no-frills holidays On our first journey, we followed Alf Wainwright's route through the North York Moors (stark and lovely like the end of the world), the Yorkshire Dales (where we encountered horizontal sheets of rain), and the Lake District (lush hills with rocky tops ringing with their literary inspiration). It was so much fun, we did it again in 2000.

               In between, we walked Offa's Dyke (160 rugged and breathtaking miles along the Welsh-English border) in 1987; Pilgrim's Way, from Winchester, once the political center of England, to Canterbury, then the ecclesiastical center of England, with my wife and a friend in 1989; and the Tour du Mont Blanc, which takes you through Switzerland, France and England, in 1993. The toughest walk we have tackled was the Walkers' Haute Route, from Zermatt to Chamonix, in 1996. Each morning began with a brutal uphill stretch. One friend finally had to take a bus and meet us ahead.”

                In 1987, Dean, Jessica, and some friends tackled the one-day Round Manhattan Walk (about 36 miles), about which Dean says, “The battering of walking on the pavement all day left me sorer than the New York Marathon would a few years later.” Other favorite journeys include the Mont Ventoux midnight climb, in France, the Na Pali Coast, in Kauai, Hawaii, and a series of inn-to-inn walks that Dean did for Mid-Atlantic Country Magazine : From Back Bay, Virginia, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina along the Allegheny Trail in West Virginia; and on the Delaware River Trail, 1994.

               In 1999, Dean sailed as a sailor trainee on board the tallship HMS Rose from New York to Bermuda. And in 2001, he retraced Captain James Riley's route on foot and on camelback through Western Sahara, which informed his book Skeletons on the Zahara . Click here to go to his trip journal, on this website.

Dean's current pet project is the annual  James River Writers Conference in Richmond, Virginia, an event he helped found in 2002. Held on the first weekend of October at the Library of Virginia in historic downtown Richmond, the conference is known for its relaxed and collegial atmosphere as well as for its noteable guests. 

                  Writers who have spoken at the conference include Mark Bowden, Martin Clark, Brian Haig, Evans Hopkins, Tony Horowitz, Edward P. Jones, Alex Kershaw, Jon Kukla, T. R. Pearson, Richard Price, Tom Robbins, Hampton Sides, Charles Slack, Jeannette Walls, and Logan Ward. That is, in addition to Richmond's own Clay Chapman, Phaedra Hise, D. L. Hopkins, Emyl Jenkins, Charles Jones, Caroline Kettlewell, David Lawrence, Ann McMillan, Buffy Morgan, Howard Owen, Cheryl Pallant, Stephen  Previtera, David L. Robbins, Ron Smith, Jason Tesauro, Kathleen Reid, Nikki Turner, Irene Ziegler and many others.  

                Among the editors who have spoken at JRWC are Morgan Entrekin, the head of Grove-Atlantic Press; Jim Meigs, formerly editor in chief of Us and Premiere magazines and currently editor in chief of Popular Mechanics; and  Little, Brown editor in chief Geoff Shandler.