About Daleen

Daleen Berry is an award-winning author, editor, investigative journalist and public speaker. She has been a journalist since 1979, when she began reporting while still in high school. Berry was selected as her high school’s correspondent, and assigned to write for two local newspapers she later went to work for, The Preston County Journal/News and The Dominion Post. In 1990, Berry received a first-place for investigative journalism from the West Virginia Press Association while reporting for The Preston County Journal/News.
In that time, she has written more than 1,800 articles for newspapers, magazines, and newsletters. Many of those articles dealt with domestic violence. This included preventative measures, criminal court trials of husbands who killed their wives, rape and domestic violence campaigns, and child sexual abuse.

In June 2006, her memoir took first place in the “Appalachian Theme” category of the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. In May 2005, she won second place in the M.M. Neely Persuasive Speaking Competition, at Fairmont State University, for her speech regarding child sexual abuse and its link to domestic violence. Berry also served as editor of The Columns, FSU’s student-run newspaper, during the Fall 2004 semester, where she is majoring in business management. While serving as editor, Berry led her staff to a record number of awards in the Society of Collegiate Journalists’ annual competition.

In 1991, Berry was editor-in-chief of publications she wrote and published for the West Virginia Deputy Sheriffs’ Association and the West Virginia Fraternal Order of Police. That freelance work led to increased exposure and knowledge about sexual molestation and domestic violence. From there, she met and interviewed officers from the FBI, and city, county and state officers from all over the country.

Berry has reported and edited many newspapers during her long career, including The Charleston Gazette, The Bridgeport News, The Clarksburg Exponent, The Dominion Post, The Tracy Press, The Preston County Journal/News, and The Kingsville Record. She was also a stringer for The Associated Press.

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My next book, Guilt by Matrimony, about the murder of Aspen socialite, Nancy Pfister, comes out November 17. My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Daleen Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”