Debra Gwartney

Debra Gwartney is the author of Live Through This, a memoir published in 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The book was also a finalist in 2009 for the National Books for a Better Life Award and the Oregon Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. Jeff Baker, book critic for The Oregonian, named Live Through This one of top ten Pacific Northwest Books of the year.

Debra is also co-editor, along with her husband Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, published by Trinity University Press in 2006. She has published essays in many magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, including American Scholar, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Salon, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, The New York Times (“Modern Love” column), and others.

Debra is a recipient of fellowships from The Writer's Center, located in Bethesda, Maryland, the American Antiquarian Society, Portland's Literary Arts, The Oregon Arts Commission, The Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, New Mexico, and Hedgebrook Writers Colony. In 2000, she was a scholarship winner for the Breadloaf Writers Conference.

Debra is currently a member of the nonfiction faculty for Pacific University's MFA in Writing program. She lives in Western Oregon with her husband.