During this program, Debra Gwartney, author of Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love, describes the heart-wrenching process she went through while trying to get her two run-away daughters back home and straightened out.

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Live Through This was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book was also a finalist in 2009 for the National Books for a Better Life Award and the Oregon Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. Jeff Baker, book critic for The Oregonian, named Live Through This one of top ten Pacific Northwest Books of the year.

Debra Gwartney is also co-editor, along with her husband Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, published by Trinity University Press in 2006. She has published essays in many magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, including American Scholar, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Salon, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, The New York Times (“Modern Love” column), and others.

Gwartney is currently a member of the nonfiction faculty for Pacific University’s MFA in Writing program. She lives in Western Oregon with her husband.

Visit Debra Gwartney's Web site.

Hear Liane Hansen's interview with Debra Gwartney during NPR’s Sunday Morning Edition.

You'll find Live Through This at Fact & Fiction in Missoula or at your local independent bookseller.

The Write Question is produced by Chérie Newman.

Read an interview with TWQ producer Chérie Newman on the Humanities Montana Web site.

Executive producer, Michael Marsolek.

Special thanks to Lisa Simon, David Moore, Barbara Theroux, and Kim Anderson.

This program is supported in part by Humanities Montana, connecting kids to community, supporting vital cultural institutions, and encouraging community conversations. And by Montana's Cultural Trust, Fact & Fiction book stores, and Public Radio Listeners.

The Write Question: a program that explores the world of writing and publishing in the western United States.

The music in this program was written and performed by John Floridis.

Send comments to Chérie Newman.

Guests on the The Write Question are writers, publishers, and illustrators living, or working for an extended period of time, in the western United States. The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.