A 2022 inductee in the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, Patrick Dearen is the author of 19 novels and 10 nonfiction books, including primary-sourced histories. Born in 1951, he grew up in the small West Texas town of Sterling City. He earned a bachelor of journalism from The University of Texas at Austin in 1974 and received nine national and state awards as a reporter for two West Texas daily newspapers.

An authority on the Pecos and Devils rivers of Texas, Dearen also has gained recognition for his knowledge of old-time cowboy life. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he preserved the firsthand accounts of 76 men who cowboyed before 1932. These interviews, along with decades of archival study, have enriched Dearen’s novels. His newest nonfiction work is "Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River," the first environmental history of the Pecos.

His middle-grade novel, "Halloween on the Butterfield Trail," was published in 2025 by TCU Press. That same year, his novel for adult readers, "The Big Dry," was named a finalist for the prestigious Spur Award of Western Writers of America. In 2024, his novel "Grizzly Moon" was also Spur Award finalist.

Dearen's 2022 novel was "The End of Nowhere," based on the events in Porvenir, Texas in 1918, when Texas Rangers and accomplices--without authorization--executed 15 men and boys of Mexican heritage in retaliation for the Brite Ranch Raid of Christmas Day in 1917. No solid evidence linked any of the executed individuals to the raid, and no one was ever indicted for participating in the executions.

Other recent novels are "Haunted Border" and "Apache Lament," both of which received awards. Other award-winning fiction titles include "Dead Man's Boot." and "The Big Drift," winner of the 2015 Spur Award for Western Traditional Novel. This work is set against the backdrop of the actual big drift of 1884, when a blizzard drove hundreds of thousands of free-ranging cattle down from the Great Plains into Texas. He has also authored the novels "To Hell or the Pecos" and "Perseverance," the latter work set along the rails in Depression-era Texas.

Dearen has received awards for his books from Western Writers of America, Western Fictioneers, Academy of Western Artists, Will Rogers Medallion, San Antonio Conservation Society, West Texas Historical Association, New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards, and Permian Historical Society. A backpacking enthusiast and ragtime pianist, he makes his home in Midland, Texas.