J. Dean says she writes because of her encounters with whales, hurricanes, clown fish, sea snakes, Tuvalu children, dancing dolphins, hitchhiking birds, meditating iguanas, Swami Ram, a baby elephant, a Maori lawyer, the gentle Thai people, and a birthing in Lamu, to name a few. She says her favorite place in the world is mid-ocean in a serenity that is never completely silent, with the purity of nature's power, the beauty of touchable stars, gentle winds, and hellacious storms. She and her husband, Rauf Bolden, spent seven years circumnavigating Earth. 160,000 miles in a 35ft sailboat. The adventures included getting arrested in Yemen when they mistakenly anchored in a PLO training bay at the Gate-of-Tears (Bab-el-Mandeb). She writes from experience and from seafarers' stories gathered along the way, letting fact and fiction freely dance.
