Deb has taught at Warren Wilson for 5 semesters, beginning in 1995, and has served the program in various capacities over the past 13 years. In addition, Deb has administrative and organizational experience rare among writers and teachers. For 11 years she served as a book buyer (and the principal buyer of poetry) for Borders, and she created and ran the onsite bookstore at the Dodge Poetry Festival. Her husband, Matthew, has also worked for many years in the book business, and their 7 year-old son Wyatt is (no surprise) an avid reader.

Deb holds a BA from The College of Wooster, an MA from the University of Virginia, and the MFA from the University of Iowa. Her many awards include the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, a “Discovery” The Nation Poetry Award, Ohio Poet of the Year, and two NEA Fellowships. Deb’s first book, Walking Distance, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press; her second, Fimbul-Winter, is currently under consideration. Individual poems have appeared in The Nation, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, Western Humanities Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Missouri Review, and Southern Review, among other journals, and her essay “The Third Image: Constellations of Correspondence in Emily Dickinson, Joseph Cornell, and Charles Simic” was published in The Cortland Review last spring.

What about the Warren Wilson MFA program led you to accept the directorship position?

Since 1995, Warren Wilson has given me the most rewarding teaching opportunities of my life—the program is so thoughtfully designed, the faculty so committed, the students gifted and serious. It’ll be a privilege to do more for the program in this new capacity—to make WW my full-time, literal home. It’s already felt like home for years.

You taught at Warren Wilson for five semesters, so you know what you’re getting into. What part of the residency are you most looking forward to? Dreading?

What I look forward to most at the residencies are the faculty lectures, and that sense of potential in initiating and mapping out the semester with a group of new students—in general, just the intensity of focus and purpose that charges those ten days. The only thing I dread is the inevitable cold/flu that knocks out half of the faculty every January.

Do you have any changes for the program in mind?

My main concern at the outset is stability. Pete did such a tremendous job—everyone, myself included, was understandably anxious about his departure. I believe wholeheartedly in, and have the deepest admiration for, the way he approached the directorship; he’ll continue to be my model. The program, over time, will evolve, necessarily—but any future changes won’t be just my doing; they’ll be the result of joint decisions by the Academic Board, veteran faculty members who keep the program’s best interests at heart.

Lastly, the all-important WW dance floor: what is your best dance move?