Debra Spark author biography
Debra Spark is the author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint (starred review in Publishers
Weekly) and The Ghost of Bridgetown, as well as editor of the groundbreaking anthology Twenty
Under Thirty, which first introduced readers to many of today’s best-known writers (including
Ann Patchett, Bret Lott, Lorrie Moore and others.) She is also the author of Curious Attractions:
Essays on Fiction Writing, which collects her lectures on the craft of fiction.
She’s been a fellow at Radcliffe College’s Bunting Institute, as well as a recipient of a National
Endowment for the Arts Award. Her short stories, essays and reviews have been published in
Food and Wine, Esquire, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington
Post, Yankee, and elsewhere. She currently teaches at Colby College, and in Warren Wilson’s
M.F.A. Program for Writers. She lives with her husband—the painter Garry Mitchell—and her
son near Portland, Maine.