Debra Gingerich received a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Mochila Review, MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry, Whiskey Island Magazine, The Writer’s Chronicle and others. She lives in Sarasota, FL where she works in communications and public relations.
Gingerich’s first collection of poems Where We Start (2007) has been published by Cascadia Publishing House. Through contemplative lyrics, historical narratives and edgy prose poems, this collection of poetry probes the intersections of self and other. Gingerich draws upon her Mennonite culture as well as her husband’s unique upbringing in the former Yugoslavia to explore the tensions between individual identity and community loyalty, along with the sharp turns of any life’s migration.
Gingerich is a co-editor of Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizenship & Cultural Attachment (2011) published by Wising Up Press. In this anthology, thirty-four women and girls from twenty countries, now living all across the U.S., reflect on their journeys to naturalized U.S. citizenship – journeys that invite all of us, native and foreign born, to consider what it means to choose to be an American.
Listen to Garrison Keillor read Debra’s poem “To My Yugoslavian In-Laws” on the 08/23/07 issue of The Writer’s Almanac.
Poet Debra Gingerich 