Peterborough has produced its share of writers, but few have travelled as quickly from local comprehensive to national bookshelf as Benjamin Dean.
Career in dates
- 1993Born in Peterborough
- 2015Graduates in Creative Writing from Manchester Met
- 2017Joins the BuzzFeed UK celebrity desk as Ben Henry
- 2020Signs a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster
- 2021Debut novel published
- 2022Wins a Diverse Children’s Book Award
- 2024Judges the BBC Young Writers’ Award
- 2025Chosen for the World Book Day list
Peterborough and Manchester
Born Benjamin Dean Henry in Peterborough on 8 November 1993 and raised by a single mother, he was educated at Hampton College on the city’s southern edge before reading Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, graduating in 2015.
A career in journalism first
His first career was in journalism rather than fiction. Writing under the name Ben Henry, he joined BuzzFeed UK and moved to the celebrity desk as a reporter and interviewer in 2017: an apprenticeship in fame and its machinery that would later feed directly into his novels.
The turn towards fiction
The turn towards fiction came almost by accident. Dean entered a short story about a seventeen-year-old boy named Charlie into a competition for Juno Dawson’s Proud anthology. The story wasn’t selected, but it caught the eye of literary agent Alice Sutherland-Hawes, who suggested he try writing for children.
In 2020 he signed a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster Children’s UK.
The books
His debut, Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow, follows a boy called Archie Albright navigating his parents’ divorce. A remarkably productive run followed.
- 2021 Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow Debut
- 2022 The Secret Sunshine Project
- 2022 The King is Dead Young adult debut
- 2023 How to Die Famous Celebrity-world thriller
- 2024 The Boy Who Fell From the Sky
- 2024 This Story is a Lie
- 2025 Bury Your Friends
Prizes and recognition
Won
Diverse Children’s Book Award, 2022
For Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow.
Shortlisted
Waterstones Children’s Book Prize
For Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow.
Shortlisted
YA Book Prize and the Jhalak Prize
Both for How to Die Famous.
Selected
World Book Day, 2025
This Story is a Lie was chosen for the list, putting his writing into the hands of children across the country for a pound.
What he writes about
Dean writes openly and warmly about LGBTQ+ lives for young readers, and has spoken about wanting to write the books he needed as a boy. In 2024 he sat on the judging panel for the BBC Young Writers’ Award.
His place in the story
He belongs to the newest chapter of Peterborough’s literary story: proof that the tradition running from the abbey chroniclers through John Clare is still being written, now for readers who are just starting out themselves.