Dennis Martin Brooks is the pen name of Dr. Dennis Perzanowski, a native Philadelphian and a New York University graduate. He moved to Miami, Florida, to teach college-level English and linguistics, but was bitten by the theater bug. Dennis performed at the Gaslight Playhouse in Coconut Grove and in industrial commercials on Miami Beach. Proud of his Polish heritage, but seeing his name in The Miami-Herald, he believed it sounded like a Polish piano player was in the cast. One night, backstage, he picked up a book written by a J.P. Brooks, and Dennis Brooks was born. Dennis did summer stock at Pennsylvania’s Millbrook Playhouse, moved to New York City, and performed at St. Clement’s Space. As an extra on As the World Turns, his left foot was framed in a flashback rebroadcast over several weeks. As residuals for his foot diminished, Dennis moved to Washington, DC, working for thirty-six years at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, writing numerous articles on human-robot interaction, and teaching English to robots. But theater was still in his blood. At the Fairfax Cable Access Corporation, he created and predated (1993-1995) other gay-themed television shows with Inside/Outside the Beltway, known as “the soap opera with a lavender twist.” It won a
GLAAD award for Best Dramatic Series. In the summer of 1985, Dennis met his husband Jack on Poodle Beach in Rehoboth, Delaware. While they have been together for over forty years, they were married in 2013 on the rooftop terrace of The Kennedy Center. Dennis is working on a sequel to his first novel, The Magic Part, tentatively entitled Intermezzo.