Deborah Sosin, LICSW, MFA
Author
Debbie’s first picture book, Charlotte and the Quiet Place, illustrated by Sara Woolley, was published by Parallax Press in 2015 and has won multiple awards. The Sober Starting Today Workbook: Powerful Mindfulness & CBT Tools to Help You Break Free from Addiction was published by New Harbinger Publications, featuring with a foreword by Christopher Germer, PhD.
Debbie's essays and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe Magazine, Salon, Cognoscenti, Brevity Blog, The Writer's Chronicle, Journal News, Writer’s Digest, Zone 3, JMWW Journal, The Manifest-Station, and elsewhere. Two essays were selected to appear in the anthologies Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cat Did What? and Perspectives on Modern World History: The Apollo 11 Moon Landing. A scholarly article, "The Diary as a Transitional Object in Female Adolescent Development," drawn from her master's-thesis research, was published in the journal Adolescent Psychiatry.
She is currently working on a set of 70 micro memoirs of 70 words each to celebrate her 70th birthday.
Debbie is a member of SCBWI, the Authors Guild, and the Writers' Loft. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in 2015.
Teacher & Coach
Debbie regularly offers workshops, seminars, groups, and classes online and in person, including at GrubStreet, Harvard Business School, and privately.
Since 2012, Debbie has been an instructor and manuscript consultant at Boston's award-winning independent writing center, GrubStreet. She regularly teaches "Befriend Your Inner Critic: Skills for a Productive Writing Practice," a three-hour workshop. She also offers a three-hour workshop, "The ABCs of Writing and Publishing a Picture Book." For details, see Workshops & Groups.
Debbie has also led "Write It Like It Is" freewriting groups since 2009, where participants write without stopping, editing, or censoring in response to prompts. For details, see Workshops & Groups.
Beginning in 2022, Debbie expanded her individual and group coaching services to target writers and other creative people who are struggling with their Inner Critic and other internal and external obstacles to productivity and creativity. For details, see Coaching Services.
Editor
As a self-employed freelancer, and as an editor for the online service Reedsy, Debbie specializes in short- and long-form creative nonfiction, self-help and psychology titles, mindfulness and spirituality titles, and picture books. In her long career, Debbie has tackled everything from ad copy to book-length manuscripts. She consults with individual authors as well as organizations from concept to completion of their projects, or at any stage in-between. For details, see Editorial Services.
Debbie writes and edits the Zamir Chorale of Boston's newsletters and other communications. She served as publications director at Hebrew College and was later managing editor of the Lahey Health Journal of Medical Ethics. She also worked at Houghton Mifflin Company and other trade houses; she does occasional editing and proofreading for Little, Brown; Charlesbridge Publishing; and Candlewick Press.
Therapist
Debbie is a licensed independent clinical social worker in Massachusetts. Her experience includes work with children, adolescents, and adults in outpatient and inpatient settings. From 2004 to 2022, Debbie was a staff clinician at Sameem Associates in Newton, specializing in addictions; she was a clinical supervisor at the North Charles Institute for the Addictions.
Debbie received her MSW from Smith College School for Social Work. She served on the clinical faculties of the MSW programs at Boston College, Boston University, and Simmons College. A certified laughter yoga leader and longtime meditator, Debbie completed the Advanced Certificate Program at the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy in 2014. She has a small private psychotherapy practice and is not currently accepting new clients.
. . . and More
Debbie is a lifelong choral singer who has performed with the New World Chorale, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Orpheus Singers, the Zamir Chorale of Boston, Chorus pro Musica, and the Master Singers, among many choral groups. She has had the pleasure of singing at Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Boston’s Symphony Hall, and on tour in Europe and Israel with Zamir.
A regular Boston cast member of the comedy show “Mortified,” Debbie read from her angst-ridden teenage diaries at Club Oberon in Cambridge, Mass., and other venues, from 2006 to 2020. Originally from Rye, New York, Debbie lived in Munich, Germany, as a teenager and now lives outside of Boston.