Debra Gwartney

Biography

Debra Gwartney is the author of two memoirs, Live Through This (Harcourt, 2009), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and, most recently, I Am a Stranger Here Myself (New Mexico, 2019), winner of the 2017 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Award. She teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University. 

See Work

ESSAYS / Summer 2020

Suffer Me to Pass

By Debra Gwartney ,  Illustration by Lydia Ricci

It was only a beer bottle I found in the middle of the trail, but it pinged an impulse in me to go. Get back to the car, give up our Saturday hike. I didn’t tell Cheryl, who stood by while I picked up the bottle and knocked off the dust...

Illustration by Lydia Ricci