Terrance Dean is an author, academic and former MTV executive. He is best known for his 2008 memoir Hiding in Hip-Hop and is the author of books including Reclaim Your Power! A 30-Day Guide to Hope, Healing and Inspiration for Men of Color, Straight From Your Gay Best Friend – The Straight Up Truth About Relationships, Love, and Having A Fabulous Life, Visible Lives: Three Stories in Tribute to E. Lynn Harris,. In 2011, Dean made his fiction debut with his novel, MOGUL.Since 2019 he has been a postdoctoral fellow in Black Studies at Denison University.
Career
Dean is a contributing writer to the anthologies, Souls of My Brothers and Always Too Soon. He has also written for VIBE, ESSENCE, XXL, Hello Beautiful, Bossip.com, Juicy Magazine, Huffington Post, The Advocate, The New York Sun, The Tennessean, Fatherhood Today, and The Michigan Chronicle’s Front Page. Dean has been featured in Newsweek, Ms. Magazine, Time magazine, New York Magazine, The Observer UK, Genre, VIBE, Hip Hop Weekly, Juicy magazine, Toronto NOW, AOL Black Voices, XXL.com, Bossip.com, Mediatakeout.com, Sister2Sister magazine, and Essence magazine. He has also appeared across the country, and internationally, on popular syndicated radio shows – NPR, The BBC, Frank & Wanda Morning Show, The Michael Eric Dyson Show, Russ Par, The Tom Joyner Morning Show, and The Wendy Williams Experience. He has made national television appearances on Fox’s The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, and Fox’s Red Eye, CNN’s Headline News, NBC 10 Philadelphia, ABC 6 Philadelphia, WB 11 New York, and FOX 2 in Detroit. In addition to writing, Dean has worked in the entertainment industry for over 15 years with industry professionals including Spike Lee, Rob Reiner, Keenan Ivory Wayans, and Anjelica Huston. He has worked with television and film production companies such as B.E.T., Savoy Television, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Sony Pictures. Dean also worked with MTV Networks for several years helping to produce live award shows and events including MTV Video Music Awards, Movie Awards, Hip Hop Honors, Rock Honors, Sports & Music Festival, and Choose or Lose. Dean received his PhD in religion from Vanderbilt University, where he studied the relationships between race, sexuality, sex and gender in homiletics and liturgics. He previously received his BA in communications from Fisk University; Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt, and MA in religion from Vanderbilt. As a postdoctoral fellow at Denison University his research concerns topics including African-American religion, the African-American diaspora, Afrofuturism and the work of James Baldwin.
''Hiding in Hip Hop''
Hiding in Hip-Hop is a memoir about being a gay man in the entertainment industry.
Influences
Dean cites the late Afro-American and openly gay author E. Lynn Harris as a literary influence.
