Patty Dann (born October 30, 1953) is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. She wrote Mermaids, a coming-of-age novel about a teenage girl published in 1986. In 1990, it was made into a movie starring Cher, Winona Ryder, Bob Hoskins and Christina Ricci. She wrote one other novel, "Sweet & Crazy" (2003), about a 39-year-old woman who lives with her young son in a small town in Ohio, as the events of September 11, 2001 impacted their lives. She is the author of two memoirs, Baby Boat: A Memoir of Adoption (1998) about the adoption of her son, and The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss (and Learning to Tell the Truth About it) (2007) about the death of her husband from brain cancer.[1] It has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, German and Korean. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, O, Redbook, More, Poets & Writers, Forbes Woman, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The Writer’s Handbook and Dirt: An Anthology About Keeping House. She served as a judge for the Scholastic Young Writers Awards. She has an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and a B.A. from the University of Oregon. Dann taught at Sarah Lawrence College and the West Side YMCA. She was cited by New York Magazine as one of the “Great Teachers of NYC.” In 2008, she married Michael Hill, a journalist.[2] She has one son and two stepsons.