Get to know AWC Board Historian, Clarence Bonner.
Dean Bonner was born and raised in rural Georgia but can claim naturalized citizenship in Tallapoosa County, Alabama and Virginia Beach, Virginia. As a retired Coast Guard veteran. Bonner left the tarpaper shacks of Appalachia for a long military career, rising through the enlisted and officer ranks. He was a skilled Morse telegrapher and a calming voice during many search and rescue cases. He left a town of 300 souls to travel the world, living in Boston, New Orleans, DC, and even on the island of Guam for a couple of years.
During his 30 year Coast Guard career, he earned his BS in Security Management and still maintains the highest international certification in Security Management, Certified Protection Professional. He served his final eight years of active duty as an Intelligence Officer.
Dean is a skilled Studebaker car mechanic, tube radio repairman, firefighter, and a weekend gold prospector. His upcoming projects include recording two albums of his original humor and writing a new compilation of short stories. His wife Patricia, a multi-talented artist, shares these same interests. Together, they travel and spend time at homes in Alabama and Virginia.
Dean was a weekly columnist for The Dadeville Record before he began work as a freelance writer for Lake Magazine and Lake Martin Living magazine. His favorite assignment to date was exploring the Hog Mountain gold mine where his grandfather and great-grandfather worked.
His poetry is published in two collections called The Breaking and A Stormy Beginning, by Scars Publications. His work was featured in the February 2016 issue of Down in the Dirt literary magazine.
He wrote feature articles for The Alexander City Outlook, Dadeville Record, Lafayette Sun, and for the arts magazine The Revelator.
He was a contributing editor for Lisa Ditchkoff's book, The Girl with Caterpillar Eyebrows, about educating herself while she grew up in hiding from her father, an associate of Boston mobster Whitey Bulger.
Dean was a 2013 winner in nonfiction in Alabama’s largest writing competition, the Alabama Literary Competition, organized by the Alabama Writers' Conclave. He competed against writers nationwide with his nonfiction short story "Seeking Asylum" about visiting his mother in the state insane asylum when he was three.
Dean has a development contract with Los Angeles-based Council Tree Productions for a television series called Tar Nation that is based on his book I Talk Slower Than I Think. He co-authored a television pilot screenplay with Heidi Carroll for Tar Nation that placed as a Second Rounder / quarterfinalist in the 2019 Austin Film Festival.
And now you know a little bit more about a person who donates his time and skills to serve the members of Alabama Writer’s Cooperative as historian. Be sure to reach to him if your interests (or paths) cross.