Debra Marquart is a professor of English at Iowa State University. Her work has received numerous awards and commendations, including the John Guyon Nonfiction Award, the Mid-American Review Nonfiction Award, The Headwater's Prize, the Shelby Foote Prize for the Essay from the Faulkner Society, a Pushcart Prize, and a 2008 NEA Creative Writing Prose Fellowship among others. Marquart’s memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, received the "Elle Lettres" award from Elle magazine, a New York Times Editors’ Choice recommendation, and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award. Marquart is also the author of two poetry collections--Everything's a Verb and From Sweetness--and a collection of interrelated short stories, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories, which draws on her experiences as a female road musician.