Deborah Derrickson Kossmann,won Trio House Press's inaugural 2023 Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award for LOST FOUND KEPT: A MEMOIR (originally titled What We Hold On To). She is currently writing a collection of essays, COMPLICATIONS OF CAPTIVITY.

Deb’s humorous essays have appeared several times as “Modern Love” columns in The New York Times and her story about her relationship with the world’s oldest captive gorilla appeared in the “Opinionator” section of that newspaper. Her poetry, essays and feature articles have been published in Nashville Review, Memoir Monday, The Woven Tale Press, The Night Heron Barks, Rhino, Tiferet, Solstice Literary Magazine and Psychotherapy Networker, to name a few. Winner of the Short Memoir Competition at the 2007 Philadelphia First Person Arts Festival, she has received both a Poetry Fellowship and an Individual Creative Artist-Special Opportunity Stipend for Literature (Poetry) from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Deb is a clinical psychologist in private practice for more than thirty years. She lives in Havertown, PA with her husband, Marc, and Sofia Carmela, a cat with a whole lot of “tortitude.”