Two minutes

Growing up wild in the middle of nowhere

Debra Marquart says she's been working on her latest book for 14 years. In reality, the English professor has been writing The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere since she could put pen to paper.

Rock hauler:"I knew I had grown up in an unusual place -- the middle of North Dakota, in this ethnic enclave, surrounded by this older generation of people who had emigrated from Russia," she says. "When I went to college, I began to realize that not everyone had grown up like me, working in the fields, hauling rocks."

Performer: Marquart's inspiration for an earlier book (The Hunger Bone: Rock and Roll Stories) came from her years as a road musician with rock and heavy metal bands. Today, she performs with a jazz-poetry group, the Bone People.

Teacher: The recipient of many national honors, Marquart uses her experience as a poet and creative writer to help her students understand their own struggles with language.

Must read: The Horizontal World recently picked up the prestigious 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award. It was well received in The New York Times Book Review and selected by Elle as its August 2006 "Must Read" pick.