| Deborah Z. Porter | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1958 Cleveland, Ohio, USA |
| Residence | Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | critic, executive director |
Deborah Z. Porter (born 1958) is non-profit director best known for founding the Boston Book Festival, which she has run since 2009. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Porter was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Brandeis University in 1980, and founded a non-profit to match students with meaningful internships. Later she pursued her love of books, getting an MA in Children's Literature, and writing as a critic for Kirkus Reviews, Ruminator Review, and WBUR.[1]
In 2006, Porter looked into starting a Boston-area book festival, as none had been held in Boston since the Boston Globe Book Festival had been discontinued.[1][2] In 2009 she founded a non-profit, the Boston Book Festival, to run such an event each year. The first festival was held that October in Copley Square, drawing over 10,000 attendees and a positive response from the speakers. The festival grew to 25,000 attendees and over 100 presenters each year, including a number of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize–winning authors.[3][4]
In 2010, Porter started the "One City One Story" project in Boston, to encourage everyone in the city to read the same story and discuss it together.[5] Unlike other city-wide reading projects, this project gave away 30,000 copies of the selected story to city residents, organizing large-group discussions involving hundreds of people.[6] This is now an annual event.[7]