Dana Perino Discusses Purple State at Westport Event
Dana Perino discussed her debut novel Purple State at an event in Westport, bringing her first fiction project in front of the audience that knows her through television and books. dana perino appeared with Westporter Danielle Dobin for the conversation, and books were available for purchase and signing.
Westport with Danielle Dobin
Dobin’s role gave the event a personal edge. She and Perino were strangers in 1995 before becoming roommates in a group house on Capitol Hill, where they lived directly across the street from the Library of Congress. That shared history turned the Westport appearance into more than a routine author stop; it put two long-running Washington careers in the same room as Perino’s first novel.
Purple State on the table
Purple State follows Dorothy “Dot” Clark, a 25-year-old New York City PR professional who travels to Cedar Falls, Wisconsin, for a high-stakes political campaign. She goes with her best friends, Mary and Harper, and is drawn to Danny Dawson, a truck-driving, hockey-loving local. Set in a swing-state town, the book centers on a heated election and folds in humor, heart, and an unexpected love story.
From press briefings to fiction
Perino brings a built-in political audience to the book. She is a anchor, co-host of The Five, co-anchor of America's Newsroom, and one of the network’s key election analysts. She is also the #1 New York Times bestselling author of And the Good News Is..., Let Me Tell You About Jasper, Everything Will Be Okay, and I Wish Someone Had Told Me, and she hosts Perino on Politics.
The move into fiction fits the lane she has already built around practical political insight. Purple State keeps that subject matter but shifts it into a story engine instead of a commentary format, which gives longtime readers a new entry point without changing the terrain. For an author whose earlier books sold on advice and perspective, the new novel tests how far that audience will follow her into a campaign story with a romantic thread.
Perino’s path also carries the weight of her past in Washington: she served as White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush and was the first Republican woman to hold that job. Purple State now puts that experience into a fictional swing-state setting, and the Westport event is the first visible step in showing how her nonfiction readership responds to a debut novel built on politics rather than memoir.
