DEBRA GIRARD lives in Los Angeles, CA. She has lived for many years in Phoenix, Az, and has spent some years in Prague, the Czech Republic, as an English teacher and expatriate artist. She has a BFA and an MFA in painting, received at Arizona State University, so her education is primarily in visual art. She has no formal training in creative writing, although she has studied literature on her own and has done scant creative writing. She would be considered an "Outsider Poet". Like in her paintings and collages, she tends to make references to archetypes, and give them a modern twist, or invents her own. She is influenced by many things, including surrealist poets, narrative poetry, prose, lowbrow culture, popular culture, politics, b- horror films, and novelists, and also finds inspiration from the mundane. Her themes vary, but she noticed themes of loss, alienation, living in an urban and/or suburban environment, and, yes, poetic examinations of an autobiographical nature. She doesn't know if she fits into any poetic genres, but most of her work has a biting, satirical bent.