Dean Angeles (Elliott DeLine) is a writer from Syracuse, NY. He is the author of several books including the novels Refuse and I Know Very Well How I Got My Name. In August of 2023 he released his first book of poetry, Stumbling Toward The Altar. His essays and excerpts have been featured in The New York Times, The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard, Original Plumbing Magazine and The Advocate. He currently lives in upstate, NY on 96 acres of land in the country, with his partner, family, chickens, and goats. 

 

Praise

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“Dean Angeles’ writing also helps people with similar experiences feel less alone... {He} honestly shares his struggles and his insights, and this sharing helps us all feel our common humanity beyond our gender identities or orientation.”

 

-Dana Spiotta, Author of Stone Arabia and Wayward

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“Like so many of the classic gay and lesbian novels from the earlier part of the 20th century, these works are sure, years from now, to enjoy wider readership and recognition as pioneering examples of transgender writing. Moreover, Dean Angeles’ well-crafted storytelling and skill at cultivating voice prove that, far from being a niche genre, transgender narratives by transgender authors are a welcome and still underrepresented presence in contemporary fiction today.”

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​ -Jameson Fitzpatrick, poet, in Kirkus Review. 

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“Dean is writing at the cutting-edge of modern-day culture—with his relentless and compassionate narration of young people living out complexities of multiple sexes, genders, and sexualities. His visually and textually dynamic memoir and fiction thoroughly engage the reader and give us a window into the everyday living of life in-between rigid boundaries of male and female, man and woman, straight and gay.”

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-Minnie Bruce Pratt​, author of S/he, Crime Against Nature, and Inside the Money Machine.

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"[Refuse is] a witty and provocative debut novel chronicling a young, intelligent, and deeply insecure protagonist through his ambivalent attempts at securing love and connection within and without the transgender community.”

 

-TT Jaxx, Lambda Literary Review

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“Dean Angeles is an ambitious, witty, self-deprecating, thoughtful writer whose debut novel Refuse could meaningfully be compared to the work of Dennis Cooper (with far less violence), Brett Easton Ellis (with far fewer chemical substances), David Sedaris (with not as many belly laughs) and Leslie Feinberg (with a much less mournful air). Conversant with the queer coming-of-age narrative, the disaffected-youth novel and the transgender memoir—as well as the feminist and gender theory that each of these literary genres has inspired—Angeles pushes back against the familiar, and safe, conventions of these sources to produce a captivating story populated by fully rendered, completely believable characters who, while not always likable, and never the objects of pity, somehow manage to make an affective claim on the reader. With this as his debut effort, Angeles, not yet out of college, is a writer to watch.”

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-Jerry Wheeler, Out in Print: Queer Book Reviews

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“Refuse is a stunning debut “novoir” about an over-observant young outsider with really great hair who is outside everything – including the transgender community – but keeps a great deal bottled up inside. Funny, cynical, tough, vulnerable, honest, deluded, sagacious, self-loving and self-loathing, Refuse is irresistible.”

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-Mark Simpson, author of Saint Morrissey