Meet Deborah

Deborah Cummins is the author of two poetry collections, Counting the Waves (2006) and Beyond The Reach (2002), and a collection of personal essays, Here and Away: Discovering Home on an Island in Maine (2012). Her poems and essays have appeared in six anthologies and numerous literary magazines, including Orion, Fourth Genre, Yale Review, Shenandoah, and Gettysburg Review. Her poems have also been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Maine Public Radio’s Poems From Here and the Maine Sunday Telegram’s weekly poetry column, Deep Water. Her numerous awards include a James Michener Fellowship, the 2013 and 2012 Maine Literary Award for Short Works in Nonfiction and a Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance 2013 Book Award Finalist. She’s also been the recipient of artist residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell Coloony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2007, she was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

Deborah earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Houston in 1995. As a graduate student, she was a Writer-in-Residence at the Menil Art Collection and a public school writing instructor with Writers in the Schools. Over the years, she has taught at the University of Chicago, the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University and as a visiting writer in various high school and elementary school settings. She’s been the assistant director of the White River Writers’ Workshop at Lyon College in Arkansas, a faculty member of the Down East Writers’ Conference in Deer Isle, Maine and for a number of years curated poetry events for Opera House Arts in Stonington, Maine. She has given numerous public readings and talks in a variety of venues, including bookstores, libraries, radio programs, festivals and conferences.

From 2001-2005, Deborah served as board chair of the Poetry Foundation as it transitioned from a small 501C3 non-profit to an operating foundation following an historic multi-million bequest from the late Ruth Lilly. She remained on the board until 2010. Currently, she serves as the board president of Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.

Formerly from Chicago, Deborah resides with her husband in Portland and Deer Isle, Maine. Besides writing and reading, she enjoys travel, photography, hiking, cooking, tinkering in the garden and being captivated by the tides and ever-changing shoreline.