DEBRA SPARK is the award-winning author of five novels, including the upcoming Discipline; two collections of short stories; and two books of essays on fiction writing, as well as editor/co-editor of two anthologies. 

Her book reviews, short fiction, articles, op-eds, and essays have appeared in Agni, American Scholar, AWP Writers’ Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Cincinnati Review, the Chicago Tribune, Epoch, Esquire, Five Points, Food and Wine, Harvard Review, Huffington Post, Maine Magazine, Narrative, New England Travel and Life, the New England Review, the New York Times, Ploughshares, salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, Yankee, and Yale Alumni Quarterly, among other places.

She spent a decade writing about home, art, and design for Maine Home+Design, Decor Maine, Down East, Dwell, Elysian, Interiors Boston, New England Home, and Yankee. She now writes a regular book review column of French books in English translation for Frenchly.us. 

She has been the recipient of several awards/grants including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Bunting Institute fellowship from Radcliffe College, Wisconsin Institute Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Michigan Literary Fiction Award, and John Zacharis/Ploughshares award for best first book. Her novel Unknown Caller was picked for Maine’s statewide summer READ ME program. She has also received residency fellowships from Arteles, Dora Maar, La Porte Pointe, L’Air Arts, MacDowell, Monson Arts, Ucross, and Yaddo.

A graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the Zacamy Professor of English at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

She lives in Maine with her husband, the painter Garry Mitchell.  Her son is a carpenter and cartoonist, which means she raised a child who excels at her areas of utter incompetence.