Stephanie Debry

Stephanie DeBry was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1947. After graduating from high school in 1965, she attended Berry College, in Mt. Berry, Georgia, where she majored in English and American Literature and was Editor-in-Chief of the college newspaper.  After graduating in 1969, Ms. DeBry was awarded a full fellowship to University of Georgia in Athens. But in the following spring of 1970, before completing her graduate education, Ms. DeBry married and moved to New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She requested and was granted an extension to finish her remaining graduate work long distance. For several years she taught secondary Language Arts intermittently,  while she continued working on her Master’s Degree.  In 1976, she received her M.A. in English and American Literature with a concentration in the literature of the American south.

Ms. DeBry gave birth to one daughter in 1977, and spent her mothering years volunteering, parenting and dabbling with her writing. She worked part time for the local newspaper for several years, did some substitute teaching in the public school system, and was an adjunct instructor for Daytona Beach Community College. Throughout it all, Ms. DeBry devoted a great deal of time to developing her craft, writing short stories, poetry, and some as yet unfinished attempts at longer books: a novel and a book about full-time mothering. The latter book was her passion during a time when most educated women were choosing to pursue careers, so Ms. DeBry was inspired to defend and explain her choice, but found that parenting and volunteer work brought her so much satisfaction that she laid aside her writing project in favor of those occupations. She also enjoyed sailing with her husband, participating in regattas, and later going out on their fishing boat. Despite being a bit of a homebody  who always has her nose in a book, either her own or someone else’s, Ms. DeBry has visited nine countries and has done quite a bit of driving across the United States.

After enjoying a rich social life for a number of years, followed by much time spent caring for elderly relatives, Ms. Debry went into semi-seclusion for several years in order to write ‘The Shoebox’.  Begun as a way to exorcise her grief over the loss of her parents and to leave a memory of them to the younger generations, the book soon evolved into so much more–a look at the changes she had experienced in her lifetime and an accumulation of any tidbits of wisdom that had resulted. Ms. DeBry is now busy marketing her long awaited first book, and enjoying being a grandmother.