Debra Di Blasi

Debra Di Blasi (born May 27, 1957 in Kirksville, Missouri) is an author, screenwriter and publisher.

She received the 2003 James C. McCormick Fellowship in Fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the 1991 Eyster Prize in Fiction, the 2008 Diagram Innovative Fiction Award, 2008 Inspiration Grant from Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, and three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other awards. She was a finalist in the Heekin Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress. Drought & Say What You Like won the 1998 Thorpe Menn Book Award.

The New York Times Book Review praised her story collection Prayers of an Accidental Nature for its "clear, resonant prose, laced with bittersweet humor." ^[1] Likewise Publishers Weekly wrote that "Di Blasi's style and her objective distance and comprehension of her chosen subject mark her as a very psychologically driven, very talented writer."

Her multimedia project, The Jiri Chronicles, contains over 500 individual works of prose, poetry, music, interviews, visual art, websites an ironic consumer products. Poet and editor Kevin Prufer described the work as "chaotic, brilliant and, like Jirí Cêch himself, possibly quite mad. With frenetic energy, Di Blasi mixes personal narrative with ad copy, traditional fiction with newspaper clippings, email messages, reportage, collage, and scholarship. The resulting concoction is consistently surprising, challenging, invigorating, and, most surprisingly of all, often deeply moving. Di Blasi has a mind unlike anyone else writing fiction today, and this is her finest work yet."

Her innovative writing is frequently included in related literary anthologies, and has appeared in the journals New Letters, The Iowa Review, Chelsea, Boulevard, Notre Dame Review, and many others. Her stories have been adapted to radio, film, theatre and audio CD in the U.S. and abroad.

Screenwriting credits include The Walking Wounded, finalist in the 1996 Austin Screenwriters Competition, and Drought, for which she won the 1999 Cinovation Screenwriting Award. Drought was directed by Lisa Moncure won a host of national and international awards. It was one of only six U.S. films included in the Universe Elle special section of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.

She was the art columnist for The Pitch magazine, and taught experimental writing, hyperfiction, mixed media fiction, and other writing courses at Kansas City Art Institute for seven years. She teaches and frequently lectures on 21st Century narrative forms at universities and conferences including &NOW Conference and Associated Writing Programs Conference.

She is founding publisher of Jaded Ibis Press.

Debra Di Blasi received an &NOW award in 2009 for her stories “The Incomplete But Real History of The Jiri Chronicles Illustrated by The Real Jiri Cech” and “Products” published in The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing in 2009. Di Blasi is a regular participant in the biennial &NOW festival.

Bibliography

Short fiction collections

• The Jiri Chronicles & Other Fictions, FC2/University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL (2007)
• Prayers of An Accidental Nature, Coffee House Press, Minneapolis (1999);
• Drought & Say What You Like, New Directions, New York (1997)

Novels

• What the Body Requires, Jaded Ibis Press, Seattle (1984);

External links

• debradiblasi.com
• [1]
• [2]
• Show Me Something New: Jaded Ibis Press Is Dragging the Book into the Future
• The &NOW AWARDS: The Best Innovative Writing (Volume 1)
• &Now Festival

References

1. ^ NY Times

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Name	Di Blasi, Debra
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Date of birth	May 27, 1957
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