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I love my life. I’ve been fortunate to enjoy a huge variety of experiences while surrounded by wonderful people. I was born Debra Lynn Lehmann on September 12, 1957, in St. Paul, Minnesota. We moved when I was two, but our annual family vacation was always to St. Paul, where my grandmother lived in a huge house with a scary attic and tons of stuff she couldn’t part with. My imagination got a good workout in that house, and my grandma was the one person who believed I could do anything, including write a book. After my grandma died, Josh Hartnett’s family bought that house, so I guess he and I share some creative roots, though I’ll never catch up with him in sex appeal.

My childhood was far from ordinary, as my family lived on the grounds of the state mental institution where my dad worked. The staff consisted mostly of foreign doctors, so I grew up with kids from around the world, always in the shadow of the huge hospital and patients who walked the grounds, each more or less in his own little world. I lived in my own little world much of the time, too. My favorite hangout was a shed attached to our barracks-style cement block house, where I’d spend hours reading and imagining.

In the early 1970s, our family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, which was a hotbed for everything that little Galesburg, Illinois was not. Madison was a focal point for radical groups protesting the Vietnam War, with riots and tear gas the order of the day. It was a wild and crazy time, and I expect people and scenes from that era to continue cropping up in my work in various forms for many years to come.

By the time we moved to Davenport, Iowa, at the start of my sophomore year in high school, my parents had embraced some of the laissez-faire child-rearing attitudes carried over from our Madison years, and I suspect my brother and I both did a few things we shouldn’t have. My brother, by the way, is the smartest person I know; he’s currently writing for the Congressional Quarterly. His wife, Ana Marie Cox, is the best-known writer in our family. She's fun, witty, and smart, and I love seeing the recognition she gets from news magazines and television..

In Davenport, I had some well-grounded friends, and got out of high school with good grades and an interest in pre-law, at least until I discovered that the other pre-law students at the private college I attended were a lot more aggressive and self-absorbed than I ever wanted to be. I ended up switching colleges and graduating with a degree in English from Bemidji State University, which sits on a beautiful lake in the north woods of Minnesota.

Enamored of the woods and acclimated to the cold, it seemed natural to head to Alaska for my first teaching job. Though there was not a tree to be found in the tundra village of Nunapitchuk where I first taught, it had a beauty of its own, and the people were absolutely marvelous. I worked with a talented group of high school students on an oral history project called Cama’i, which was published by Doubleday in 1981.

After two more years in villages and the birth of my son, our family moved to the big town of Bethel. Closer to Russia than to the Lower 48 states, Bethel is a truly unique place where traditional Yup’ik ways butt heads with the gussak (white people’s) way of life. I could spend many years and many books attempting to capture the essence of Southwestern Alaska, an area so remote that few people get to experience it firsthand. I hope I’ve managed to convey at least some of its spirit in my novel A Distant Enemy.

When we moved to Fairbanks in 1987, I taught at the university, as I had in Bethel, and then transferred to North Pole High School. Yes, Virginia, there really is a North Pole. I spent 11 mostly wonderful years teaching there before retiring in 1999, the same year that my second novel, Out of the Wilderness, came out.

After all these years, each with its requisite cold, dark winter, I’m still in love with Alaska. I hope my picture books Under the Midnight Sun, Alaska’s Animal Babies, and A Totem Tale capture some of the spirit of this special part of the world. My first travel guide, the Insiders' Guide to Anchorage and Southcentral Alaska, will be released by Globe Pequot Books in May of 2007.

My family is the best. My son, Lynx, and daughter, Jessica, are two of the most delightful people I know. Lynx and his wife Lauren live in Gig Harbor, Washington, while Jess is getting ready to start a post-baccalaureate program in Speech Pathology. My dad and his wife Margie are incredibly supportive, and I know I'm always welcome at their home in Tacoma, Washington. My mom, who lives in Illinois, shares my love for the written word.

I have a huge amount of creative energy, and when I get an idea, I tend to plunge right in. I'm so appreciative of my writing friends, including Gail Giles, Betty Monthei, and Claire Rudolf Murphy. They keep me focused and inspired.

That’s it – the story of my life so far. I love to read, write, travel, and hike. I enjoy good music, and I love to dance. I love the feeling of a job well done, even if I’m the only one who appreciates it. I believe in living life to the fullest and not letting a day slide by without remembering how grateful I am to the Creator of this great big world. Faith, hope, and love – that’s what it’s all about.

I love my life. I’ve been fortunate to enjoy a huge variety of experiences while surrounded by wonderful people. I was born Debra Lynn Lehmann on September 12, 1957, in St. Paul, Minnesota. We moved when I was two, but our annual family vacation was always to St. Paul, where my grandmother lived in a huge house with a scary attic and tons of stuff she couldn’t part with. My imagination got a ... More