Deborah Vlock, Ph.D., is the author of the books Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges: A Guide to Life with Emotionally Complex Kids (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) and Dickens, Novel Reading, and the Victorian Popular Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 1998), as well as an essayist, blogger, and fiction writer. Her short work has been published in journals and magazines such as O Magazine; Cognoscenti; Hunger Mountain Review; Huffington Post; Literary Mama; The Atlantic online (excerpt); The Missouri Review Blog; the Young Adult Review Network (YARN); Pamplemousse; The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and numerous scholarly journals. She is also a mental-health parenting blogger for Psychology Today (currently on hiatus), having initially entered the parenting-writing zone with a personal blog called The Striped Nickel.

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​Deb has been invited to speak to Boston-area graduate students in Special Education and Genetics Counseling; at various SEPAC (Special Education Parent Advisory Council) meetings at K-12 schools in Massachusetts; at continuing education programs for Family Partners 

and other child/family mental-health professionals; and at occasional meetings/political advocacy events of PPAL (the Parent-Professional