Andrea Palpant Dilley Bio

Andrea Palpant Dilley grew up in Kenya, the daughter of Quaker missionaries. She attended Whitworth University, where she graduated summa cum laude with bachelor's degrees in English literature, writing, and Spanish. Her written work has appeared in Rock & Sling, Geez Magazine, and the Utne Reader, as well as in the anthology Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing up Female and Evangelical (Wipf and Stock).

As a documentary director, writer and producer, Dilley has produced content for HDNet, the Hallmark Channel, American Public Television, and various PBS stations (KAET, KCTS, KSPS), and has shown her work at the Amnesty International Film Festival and the Northwest Asian American Film Festival. Her largest project to date, a 60-minute documentary on the Japanese American experience of WWII in the Northwest, was produced in collaboration with Whitworth University. The program, In Time of War, was broadcast nationwide in major markets via American Public Television.

As a documentary producer, Dilley has co-taught, with Professor of English Leonard Oakland, the Jan Term course Documentary and Avant Garde Film; they explored the documentary as a form of artistic expression, public argumentation and persuasion. Joining her experience as a practitioner with her interest in theoretical analysis of media, Dilley will begin a master’s in media studies at the University of Texas in the fall.

Dilley lives with her husband and daughter in Austin, Texas, where she is at work on a spiritual memoir slated for publication in spring 2012 by Zondervan/HarperCollins. The book explores her experience of growing up in the Christian church, encountering a crisis of faith in her early 20s, and leaving the church for a period of time.