Debra Gingerich was raised in Philadelphia, NY, a small town in upstate New York near the Lewis County Mennonite community of her birth. She has since lived in Lancaster, PA and Philadelphia, PA before moving to Sarasota, FL. She currently works as the Web Communications and Publications Manager for State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota.

Debra completed her undergraduate studies at Eastern Mennonite University and 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 was a 2007 winner of the John Ringling Towers Individual Artist Fellowship. Her first collection of poems Where We Start was published by Cascadia Publishing House in March 2007.