Debra Magpie Earling

Debra Magpie Earling
Born	(1957-08-03) August 3, 1957 Spokane, Washington
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, University of Montana English professor
Ethnicity	Bitterroot Salish
Alma mater	University of Washington ; MA in English, MFA in Fiction Writing, Cornell University

Debra Cecille Magpie Earling (born August 3, 1957 Spokane, Washington) is a Native American novelist, and short story writer. She is the author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, which was on display at the Missoula Museum of Art in late 2011. Her work has also appeared in Ploughshares and the Northeast Indian Quarterly.

Life

She is of the Bitterroot Salish (tribe).

She is a graduate of the University of Washington, and holds both an MA in English and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Cornell University.

Earling is currently a faculty member in the English Department at the University of Montana at Missoula.

Awards

• 2007 Guggenheim Fellow
• 2003 American Book Award
• 2006 NEA grant

Reviews

Debra Magpie Earling's debut novel Perma Red is something of a miracle. The University of Montana creative writing professor began writing it in 1984 and, over the years, it has been through at least nine different rewrites, trimmed from an epic-length 800 pages to a compact 288, burned to a crisp in a house fire, and rejected by publishers who loved the writing but thought the original ending too dark and brutal. Through it all, Earling persevered and the novel stands as a testament to her faith and patience.

External links

• "Debra Magpie Earling", University of Minnesota