DEBRA SPARK is the author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint (Faber & Faber, Avon) and The Ghost of Bridgetown (Graywolf) and editor of the anthology Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America's New Young Writers (Scribners). Her thoughts on the craft of writing have been collected in Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing (University of Michigan Press). Short fiction, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in Esquire, Ploughshares, Epoch, Agni, Gingko Tree Review, narrativemagazine.com, The New York Times, New England Travel and Life, Food and Wine, Yankee, Down East, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other places. She has been the recipient of several awards including a NEA fellowship, a Bunting Institute fellowship from Radcliffe College, a Pushcart Prize, and the John Zacharis / Ploughshares award for best first book. She teaches at Colby College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives with her husband and son in North Yarmouth, Maine.