Debbie writes creative nonfiction and poetry, exploring her relationships with the landscape, creatures, and characters of her Alaskan home.

Her memoir Fast Into the Night: A Woman, Her Dogs, and Their Journey North on the Iditarod Trail (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2016, Red Hen Press 2018), recounts her experiences running the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and celebrates the deepening and inextricable bond she shared with her Alaskan huskies. Fast Into the Night received the 2016 National Outdoor Book Award and the 2017 Willa Award for Creative Nonfiction.

Since 2015, Debbie has collaborated with artists, scientists, and writers creating multi-genre projects about change in the far north. Her recent work, Threshold 32°F (by poet Moderow, painter Maisch, and ecologist Hewitt) is a narrative about the high stakes when temperatures rise in the boreal forest. Debbie’s current prose work explores her lifelong relationship with wild places in the context of change, both personal and global.

Debbie earned a BA from Princeton University in 1977 and an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop in 2013. She and her husband Mark live in Denali Park and Anchorage Alaska.