February 28, 2021: Debra Marquart - The Horizontal Wold: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere

Debra Marquart is the author of six books including 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. Marquart’s 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. The Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Marquart teaches in ISU’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. 

The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere is a wry memoir about a family farm, a father, and a daughter, and why it's so hard to go home again. Debra Marquart grew up on a family farm in rural North Dakota--on land her family had worked for generations. From the earliest age she knew she wanted out; surely life had more to offer than this unyielding daily grind, she thought. But she was never able to abandon it completely. In this distinctive memoir, she chronicles this process of flight and return--not only from and to a particular landscape, but to respect and admiration for her father. Poet Marquart offers a deeply intelligent rumination on the meaning of native ground, on freedom and security, and on the forging of identity.