Debra Castellano is an established web, radio, TV, and theater writer and editor with a track record of successes with leading ad agencies, top-tier television networks, and major-market radio stations.
Her well-rounded advertising copywriting has included everything from a user-friendly B2B software brochure, to a 2-minute animated case video featuring Slappy from the Goosebumps movie, to a neon sign that put a new restaurant on the map (and helped it get a Michelin star).
Deb’s specialty is environmental issues and other humanitarian causes, as evidenced in her highly regarded blog; her one-woman Off-Broadway show about waste; and a recent environmental certificate from Columbia University.
Deb started out as a TV comedy writer in Los Angeles, with some radio thrown in. But ultimately, New York City beckoned. And since NYC is advertising, publishing and theater, that’s what she did when she got there. She authored a few short plays, including one published by Playscripts, Inc. in 2009. Meanwhile, she developed her chops as an advertising copywriter and book editor.
And then she took her words onto the stage herself, writing a two-part one-person show called The Adventures of Swamp Girl (which includes baseball signals and a very therapeutic striptease), and performing it in several venues and festivals, including New York’s Midtown International Theatre Festival (2011), the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival (2013) and the New York International Fringe Festival (2014).
She followed that up with Waste Management: The Show! in which she gives herself 49 days to save the planet. (Watch excerpts of it here, done in 2021 for the Marshstream.) And because she wanted to make an actual impact, Deb then completed a certificate program at Columbia University in Conservation & Environmental Sustainability.
That inspired her blog, CitizenDeb.com, where she tracks her attempts at saving the planet. And now you can find your gal writing a book about it. (Saving the planet.) (That’s assuming we should save it.)
Deb’s work has also been featured at The Moth; in the variety show Necromancers of the Public Domain; on the literary website Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood; and in the humor magazine Jest. She also throws one heck of a party, and hopes someday to do that again with real human people.
Deb's Brain 