Deirdre Sinnott's Biography
Deirdre Sinnott has had a wide range of experiences. She began by growing up in Utica, New York and attending Syracuse University. In 1982 she earned a BFA in Acting/Directing from their prestigious program.
She began a professional theatrical career, before leaving high school, during summers at an Actors Equity Association summer stock theater. Her theater career took her on two tours, one New York regional and one national. She moved to New York City and began to work as a theatrical stage manager, director, lighting designer, electrician, carpenter, costume assistant, sound technician and gofer for eleven years.
To support her low-paying theater habit she worked as a grocery store cashier, handed out flyers for dancing lessons to indifferent Chinatown residents, Christmas tree decorator, professional driver, and props & special effects assistant for “Tales from the Darkside” episodes.
After leaving the theater Sinnott worked at odd jobs in publishing including, quality control/inventory control at Matthew Bender Company, Inc., “reader” for various editors at Berkeley Publishing and “slush pile rejection letter sender” also for Berkeley.
Sinnott tried her hand at the retail rock pile working for RKO Video until she began focusing most of her energy on grassroots organizing for an anti-war and peace center in New York City.
She worked as a staff member of the International Action Center from its foundation in 1992 until 2004. Sinnott has traveled extensively and spoken at campuses, and international conferences about the IAC program. Using her skills from a career in the theatre, Sinnott has been able to act as the Production Manager for the various rallies that the IAC has organized in some of New York’s largest and most prestigious venues including, New York’s Town Hall and the Theatre at Madison Square Garden.
Sinnott is the founder and web designer of the on-line bookstore Leftbooks.com and spend time helping authors Leslie Feinberg, Minnie Bruce Pratt and Lisa Mullenneaux conceive and design their websites.
In 2004 she purchased a small house in Sullivan County, NY that sits in the Catskill Mountain Park. With the house came a garden and all the responsibilities that implies. After renovating the house with her partner, Charles Petzold, she began to reclaim the overgrown land. Digging the Learning Curve: How One New Yorker Turned her Thumb from Lily White to Zucchini Green follows that adventure.
She has read from her memoirs in New York City at Bluestockings Bookstore, where she was the featured reader in April 2007, Cornelia Street Cafe as part of their monthly Storytelling Series, and at Hamish & Henry Booksellers in Livingston Manor.
In the summer of 2007 she began the Summer Slam Open Mic Events at the only bookstore in Sullivan County, New York.
Sinnott has developed a flexible writing workshop designed to improve writing skills. Her goal is to have students rediscover their past by using writing to create personal essays and memoirs for publication.
She is working on two books and has recently been publishing literary criticism.
As a grassroots organizer she’s spoken at various venues in the U.S. and internationally for conferences, rallies, and classes including: Harvard; MIT; Yale; Community Church, Manhattan; Dubinsky Hall, Fashion Institute of Technology; Fordham Law School; Community Bookstore, Brooklyn; Martin Luther King Jr. High School, Manhattan; P.S. 41, Manhattan; City-As-School Graduation June 2002, Manhattan; Washington Irving High School, Manhattan; Stable Yoga Dance Studio, Brooklyn; U.N. Church Center; Dearborn Progressive Group, Sarasota, Florida; St. John’s Church, Elizabeth, NJ; New York University; City College of New York; Union Square Park, Manhattan; Unitarian Universalist Church, Bellport NY; Hiroshima Day Remembrance, Staten Island; Mid-West Organizers Conference, Milwaukee, WI; Women’s Building, San Francisco; European Conference for Peace, Athens, April 1999; Friends Meeting House, Stop the War Coalition, London, November 2003. She has also taught classes on current events and the history of socialist thought.
Contact: Deirdre@DiggingTheLearningCurve.com