Deborah Digges

{{Infobox writer

| name = Deborah Digges

| imagesize =

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| pseudonym =

| birth_name = Deborah Sugarbaker

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1950|02|6}}

| birth_place = Jefferson City, Missouri, US

| death_date = {{death date and age|2009|04|10|1950|02|06}}

| death_place = Amherst, Massachusetts, US

| occupation = {{flatlist|

Writer
poet
teacher

}}

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| alma_mater = University of California, Riverside, B.A.; University of Missouri, M.A.; Iowa Writers' Workshop, M.F.A.

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| notableworks = Vesper Sparrows (1986); Rough Music (1995)

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| awards = Ingram-Merrill Award (1985); National Endowment for the Arts grant (1987); Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award (1987); Guggenheim Fellowship, (1988); Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (1996)

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Deborah Digges (February 6, 1950 – April 10, 2009) was an American poet and teacher.

Digges was an academic who taught in the writing and English faculties of the New York University, the Boston University, the Columbia University, and the Tufts University. She published four volumes of poetry, two volumes of memoirs, and her translation of the poems of Maria Elena Cruz. She committed suicide by jumping from the top of the bleachers of the Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium.

Biography

She was born Deborah Leah Sugarbaker in Jefferson City, Missouri, on February 6, 1950. Her father was a physician and her mother was a nurse; she was the sixth child in a family of ten children.{{cite news | last = Fox | first = Margali | title = Deborah Digges, Poet Who Channeled, Dies at 59 | series = Arts | work=The New York Times | date = 2009-04-16 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/arts/17digges.html | access-date = 2009-04-16 }}

Digges received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Riverside in 1976, a Master's from the University of Missouri in 1982, and her Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1984. In the course of her academic career, she taught in the writing and English faculties of New York University, Boston University, Columbia University, and Tufts University.

She authored four books of poetry and two memoirs. Her first book of poems, Vesper Sparrows, won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize for Poetry. In 1997 Digges was awarded the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the largest prize for a single work of poetry, for her book Rough Music.{{cite web

| last = Lederman

| first = Diane

| title = Poet, Tufts professor Deborah Digges of Amherst an apparent suicide at UMass stadium

| work = Massachusetts Local News

| publisher = The Republican

| date = 2009-04-13

| url = http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/poet_tufts_professor_deborah_d.html

| access-date = 2009-04-15

}} She was also the winner of two Pushcart Prizes.{{cite web

| title = Faculty Profiles: Deborah Digges

| work = Faculty By Department, Tufts University Arts, Sciences and Engineering, English Department

| publisher = Tufts University

| year = 2009

| url = http://ase.tufts.edu/faculty-guide/fac/ddigge01.english.htm

| access-date = 2009-04-15

}} Digges translated the poems of the Cuban poet María Elena Cruz Varela. A book of poetry, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart: Poems, was published by Knopf in 2010.

Suicide

Digges died April 10, 2009, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her death was reported as a suicide following her fatal fall from the top of the bleachers of Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Bibliography

Poetry

Vesper Sparrows (Atheneum Publishers, 1986)
Late In The Millennium (Knopf, 1989)
Rough Music (Random House, 1997)
Trapeze (Knopf, 2004)
The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart: Poems (Knopf, 2010, posthumous)

Memoirs

Fugitive Spring (Knopf, 1992)
The Stardust Lounge: Stories from a Boy's Adolescence (Anchor Books, 2001).

Translation

Ballad of the Blood/Balada De La Sangre: The Poems of Maria Elena Cruz (Ecco Press, 1997)

Honors and grants

Notes

References

{{cite book

| first = Jacqueline A. K.

| last = McLean

| editor = Catherine Cucinella

| title = Contemporary American Women Poets

| publisher = Greenwood Press

| series = A-to-Z

| year = 2002

| pages = 95–99

| isbn = 0-313-31783-6 }}

External links

Academy of American Poets: [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1155 Deborah Digges]
[http://ase.tufts.edu/english/faculty/digges.asp Faculty Bio at Tufts University]
[http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/digges/poem.html Two poems from Rough Music]
[http://www.poetry.la/page211.html Video of Deborah Digges' reading on 3/9/09 at the Boston Court Theatre in Pasadena CA, as featured on Poetry.LA]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/arts/17digges.html Deborah Digges, Poet Who Channeled Struggles, Dies at 59, The New York Times, April 16, 2009]
[http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/04/tufts_mourns_ac.html Tufts mourns acclaimed poet, professor, Boston Globe, April 14, 2009]
[http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-deborah-digges27-2009apr27,0,7880540.story Deborah Digges dies at 59; distinguished poet and memoirist, LA Times, April 27, 2009]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160116090120/http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/f/findaid/findaid-idx?type=simple%3Bc%3Dascead%3Bview%3Dtext%3Bsubview%3Doutline%3Bdidno%3DUS-PPiU-sc200704 Correspondence with Gerald Stern]

Category:1950 births

Category:2009 suicides

Category:2009 deaths

Category:20th-century American academics

Category:21st-century American academics

Category:20th-century American women academics

Category:21st-century American women academics

Category:20th-century American memoirists

Category:21st-century American memoirists

Category:20th-century American poets

Category:21st-century American poets

Category:20th-century American women writers