Dorothea Brande (1893-1948) was a well respected writer and editor in New York. She was born in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago, the Lewis Institute in Chicago, and the University of Michigan. Her book Becoming a Writer, published in 1934, is still in print and offers advice for beginning and sustaining any writing enterprise. She also wrote Wake Up and Live, published in 1936, which sold over two million copies. It was made into a musical by Twentieth Century Fox in 1937.

While she was serving as associate editor of the The American Review in 1936, she married that journal's owner and editor, Seward Collins. Collins was a prominent literary figure in New York and a proponent of an American version of fascism, which he explored in The American Review.

Dorothea Collins died in New Hampshire.