Debra Marquart is a professor of English at Iowa State University.
She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University and the Stonecoast Low-Residency
MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. Marquart's work has appeared in numerous journals such as The North American
Review, Three Penny Review, New Letters, River City, Crab Orchard Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Sun Magazine, Southern
Poetry Review, Orion, Mid-American Review and Witness.
In the seventies and eighties, Marquart was a touring
road musician with rock and heavy metal bands. Her collection of short stories, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories
draws from her experiences as a female road musician. Marquart continues to perform with a jazz-poetry rhythm & blues
project, The Bone People, with whom she has released two CDs: Orange Parade (acoustic rock), and A Regular Dervish
(jazz-poetry).
Marquart's work has received numerous awards and commendations, including the John Guyon Nonfiction
Award (Crab Orchard Review), the Mid-American Review Nonfiction Award, The Headwater's Prize from New Rivers
Press, the Minnesota Voices Award, the Pearl Poetry Award (Pearl Editions), the Shelby Foote Prize for the Essay from the
Faulkner Society, a Pushcart Prize, and a 2008 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship.
A performance poet, Marquart is the
author of two poetry collections: Everything's a Verb and From Sweetness. Her memoir, The Horizontal World:
Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, was published by Counterpoint Books in 2006. It received the "Elle Lettres"
award from Elle Magazine and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award. Marquart is currently at work on a novel,
set in Greece, titled Evidence of Olives; a roots/travel memoir about immigration, geographical flight, and cultural
amnesia titled Somewhere Else this Time Tomorrow; and poetry collection titled, Small Buried Things.
