Deb Olin Unferth (born November 19, 1968) is an American short story writer, novelist, and memoirist. She is the author of the collection of stories Minor Robberies, the novel Vacation, both published by McSweeney's, and the memoir, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, published by Henry Holt. Unferth was a finalist for a 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir, Revolution.

Career

Her work has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney's, The Believer, The Boston Review, Esquire, and other magazines. She is a frequent contributor to Noon. She also has received four Pushcart Prizes. Unferth is a full professor in creative writing at The University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center and the New Writers Project.

Prison education

She founded and runs the Pen-City Writers, a two-year creative-writing certificate program at a maximum security prison in southern Texas. For this work she won the 2017 Texas Governor's Criminal Justice Service Award.

Books

Awards

Online texts

Nonfiction

Short fiction

Interviews