Bio
Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and the former Poet Laureate of the State of Iowa (2019 – 2024). She serves as the Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment and teaches in Iowa State University’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.
A memoirist, poet, and performing musician, Marquart is the author of eight books including an environmental memoir of place, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere and a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poems. Marquart’s short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories drew on her experiences as a former road musician. A singer/songwriter, she continues to perform solo and with her jazz-poetry performance project, The Bone People, with whom she has recorded two CDs.
Her work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine’s Elle Lettres Award. Marquart’s most recent books are The Night We Landed on the Moon: Essays Between Exile & Belonging (2021) and Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems (2023). In 2021, Marquart was awarded a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. For more information: debramarquart.com.
Courses
Undergraduate courses in Creative Writing and graduate courses in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment
ENGL 2070: Introduction to Creative Writing
ENGL 3040: Undergraduate Fiction Workshop
ENGL 3050: Undergraduate Nonfiction Workshop
ENGL 3060: Undergraduate Poetry Workshop
ENGL 4960: Study Abroad—Ireland: A Traveling Writers’ Workshop
ENGL 5550: Graduate Nonfiction Workshop
ENGL 5560: Graduate Poetry Workshop
ENGL 5570: Studies in Creative Writing (Travel Writing)ENGL 5570: Where Social & Environmental Justice Meet
ENGL 5590: Creative Writing Teaching Practicum
ENGL 5600: Environmental Field Experience
ENGL 5890: Supervised Practicum in Literary Editing
Research areas of interest
- Poetry, Eco-Poetics, Ekphrastic Poetry
- Intermedia Arts, Video Essays, Performance Poetry
- Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Lyric Writing, Research Nonfiction, Reportage
- Special Topics: Travel Writing, Experiential Writing, Writing of the Environmental Imagination, Writing for Social and Environmental Justice
Selected Publications
Books
Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems. New Rivers Press, 2023.
The Night We Landed on the Moon: Essays Between Exile & Belonging. NDSU Press, 2021.
Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press 2016. (Co-editors: Robert Alexander, Eric Braun, Debra Marquart).
Small Buried Things: Poems. Moorhead, MN: New Rivers Press, 2015.
The Horizontal World: Growing up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere. A Memoir. New York: Counterpoint Books. Hardcover 2006; Paperback 2007.
From Sweetness: Poems. Long Beach: Pearl Editions, 2002.
The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories. Minneapolis, MN: New Rivers Press, 2001.
Everything’s a Verb. Minneapolis, MN: New Rivers Press, 1995.
Recent Prose Publications
“How Fish Learned to Sing.” Narrative Magazine. June, 2025.
“Healing the Wild.” The Iowan. November/December 2022: 17 – 27.
“What A Writer Needs.” Humanities North Dakota Magazine. 2021: 4-10.
“Small Buried Things: Essay on Fracking.” Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change, edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Tom Kerns. Oregon State University Press, 2021. 108-114.
“Target.” Stone Gathering: A Reader 3.1 (Summer 2021): 40-41.
“A North Dakota Story.” The Midwessay. 16 April 2021.
“The Death of a Lost Dog.” The Iowan. March 2021: 52-57.
“At 79, My Mother Decides to Plant Trees.” Fourth Genre. (2021) 23.1. 171-180.
“Taste of Home.” On Second Thought | Sense of Place Issue. Humanities North Dakota, April 2021.
“On the Ephemerality of Things: Thoughts on the Demise of a Literary Press.” High Plains Reader. 5 May 2020.
“Tell It Cool: On Writing with Restraint.” New Ohio Review: The Personal Political. Feb. 2020.
“The Unhappy Hour.” Ascent Magazine. 6 November 2019.
“Buried Voices.” Story of the Week. Narrative Magazine. 7 June 2018.
“Teachings from the Horse Nation: Postcards from America.” Pacific Standard Magazine. June 2018.
“Living to Tell the Tale.” The Fourth River. Vol. 0.3 (2016): 16 – 24.
“When the Band Broke Up.” Alligator Juniper XX. 2016: 3 – 5.
“The Microphone Erotic.” From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women Writers and Their Machines. Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2016: 192 – 201.
“Carte Blanche.” On Second Thought: Sense of Place Issue. North Dakota Council on the Humanities, 2014: 36-44.
Recent Poetry Publications
“to the sycamore on university and lincoln way,” The Iowan. Forthcoming, 2025.
“all the rage this winter,” terrain.org. 10 June 2025.
“Intervention.” Poetry commissioned by University Museum, in response to sculpture, Transformation, by Albert Paley. Iowa State University Museums. 2025.
“Metamorphosis.” Poetry commissioned by University Museums, in response to The Moth sculpture by Mac Adams. 2025.
“Mujer Pegada (Stuck Woman).” Poetry commissioned by University Museums in response to Mujer Pegada Series No. 1 by Manuel Neri. 2025.
“Special Delivery.” Poetry commissioned by University Museums, in response to Lipid Nanoparticle glass sculpture by Luke Jerram. 2025.
“Where Once.” Poetry commissioned by University Museums, in response to Ghost Trees sculpture by Tom Stancliffe, 2025.
“Chokecherry” and “Landline.” Grist Magazine. 16 (2024): 143-146.
Five poem sequence from Leave it in the Ground: “[In the dojo, Master Yun taught us],” “[And for Deja, whom I discovered a little tipsy],”[And leave it in the ground for my student in Watford City],” “[And for Rhonda, who lives in White Earth with a pump jack],” “[I return to the state of my birth in haste].” Manchester Poetry Prize, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. December, 2023.
“In Defense of the Least Weasel: Poem & Scientific Note.” Voices from the Prairie: A Publication of Humanities Iowa (Fall/Winter 2022): 8-9.
“Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars.” Des Moines Register. Iowa Poet Laureate poem to commemorate Iowa’s 175th Anniversary. 23 Dec. 2021.
“Pre-Existing Conditions.” Stone Gathering: A Reader. III. 2 (Fall 2021): 38-40.
“When the First Love of the One You Love Dies” North American Review. 306.3 (Fall 2021).
“Winter Amaranth.” Poems for the Moment, Prairie Public Radio, Fargo, ND. 22 March 2021.
“Come November.” Terrain.org: A Journal of Built + Natural Environments. 28 October 2018.
“Even on a Sunday Drive.” Steve Kowit Prize, San Diego Poetry Annual. 2018.
“Traveling with Guitar.” American Life in Poetry Series. 23 Nov. 2015. Ed. Ted Kooser.
“Lament.” New Letters. 81.1 (2014)
“Things Not to Put in Your Mouth,” “Poor You,” “China: 5,000 Years,” and “News Flash.” 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize. Manchester School of Writing, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK. 18 Oct. 2013.
“Kablooey is the Sound You’ll Hear.” The Normal School 6.2 (2013): 19.
“Ecdysis.” River Styx 89 (2013): 8-9.
“Door to Door.” Narrative Magazine. Poem of the Week. 31 March 2013.
“Couples Traveling.” Narrative Magazine 20 July 2013.
“The Oud.” Comstock Review 26.1-2 (2012): 136.
“Ground Oregano.” River Styx 88 (2012): 66.
Recent Honors & Awards
Narrative Magazine, First Prize, 2025 Winter Story Contest for “How Fish Learned to Sing.”
James Autry Poetry Award, received from Poetry & Organization, awarded during Poetry Palooza Festival, Des Moines, IA. April 19, 2024.
2023 Manchester Poetry Prize. Shortlist Honors. Manchester University, UK. December 2023.
2024 MIPA Gold Book Award, Catetory of Poetry & Graphic Novels Award for Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems. Midwest Independent Publishers Association (MIPA). Announced at the 24th Annual Book Awards, Minneapolis, MN. June 22, 2024.
Michael Steinberg Nonfiction Award, Fourth Genre. Finalist. “At 79, My Mother Decides to Plant Trees.” 2020.
Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Book Award Competition. Short List. Nonfiction Manuscript, “The Beeches Lifted up Their Green Arms to Comfort Me: Essays.” 2019.
“Top Five Stories of the Year” Award for “Buried Voices.” Narrative Magazine. 2018.
“Lament” selected by poet Edward Hirsch for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2016.
Alligator Juniper Creative Nonfiction Award. “When the Band Broke Up.” 2016.
Invited Monthlong Residency. Moulin a Nef, Auvillar, France. Virginia Center for the Arts—France. July-August, 2016.
“Traveling with Guitar” selected by poet Ted Kooser for American Life in Poetry Series. Nov. 2015. Poetry column appears in 30 countries with a readership of 3,500,000.
Visiting Fellowship. Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI. 10 Week Fellowship, $10,000 Fellowship. Awarded in 2014. Grant Activity in March/April, 2015.
Narrative Magazine. “Top Five Poems of the Year” Award for “Door-to-Door,” 2014.
Paumanok Poetry Award from the Visiting Writers Program at Farmingdale State College, New York, 2014.
2013 Manchester Poetry Prize, Short-List Honors. Manchester Writing School, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK. 2013.