Deborah
Fallows

Author, linguist

Deborah writes about: Society

Deborah Fallows is a writer and a linguist. She has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Washington Monthly. She is the author of three books: A Mother’s Work (1985); Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language (2010); and co-written with her husband, James Fallows, Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America, a New York Times bestseller. The book is the basis of an upcoming HBO documentary, also called Our Towns, which HBO will air early in 2021.

Fallows is a Fellow at New America. Before that, she was a senior research fellow at the Pew Research Center. Previously, she was the director of data architecture for Oxygen Media, and the Assistant Dean and Assistant Director of Admissions at Georgetown University. She has a PhD in theoretical linguistics.

She and her husband have two grown sons, and five young grandchildren. They have recently founded the nonprofit Our Towns Civic Foundation, to promote journalism about local resilience and innovations.

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