Dee Andrews is a historical novelist drawn to stories of family and home, loss and resilience, and the emotional and literal journeys that shape who we become. She writes character-driven fiction rooted in history and the complicated choices people face in times of upheaval.
Her debut novel The Fevered World grew from interest in the 1918 influenza pandemic sparked by living in Spain during the 2009 swine flu outbreak. Learning that scientists and historians theorized the 1918 flu may have originated in her home state of Kansas further hooked her. Wanting to understand how the virus traveled from rural America to reshape the world, she spent years researching the era and the lives caught in its wake. Through intimate storytelling, she explores how individuals persist, adapt, and make meaning amid grief, uncertainty, and change. A short story inspired by this research received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, and she is a graduate of Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s The Book Project.
She is currently at work on a new novel, On The Rails, inspired by her brother and centered on a young man full of agitation and wanderlust who rides freight trains across America in the 1980s and ’90s. Though her projects span eras and settings, her fiction consistently returns to questions of belonging, independence, and what it means to find—or carry—home.
Dee and her husband met on a blind date in college and have two daughters. When not immersed in writing, she enjoys downward dogs, hiking, and traveling. A sun-kissed tomato from her parents’ garden in Kansas might be her favorite food.