She was born Deborah Leah Sugarbaker in
Jefferson City, Missouri, on February 6, 1950. Her father was a physician and her mother was a nurse; she was the sixth child in a family of ten children. Digges received a
Bachelor of Arts degree from the
University of California, Riverside in 1976, a
Master's from the
University of Missouri in 1982, and her
Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the
Iowa Writers Workshop in 1984. In the course of her academic career, she taught in the writing and English faculties of
New York University,
Boston University,
Columbia University, and
Tufts University. She authored four books of poetry and two memoirs. Her first book of poems,
Vesper Sparrows, won the
Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize for Poetry. In 1997 Digges was awarded the
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the largest prize for a single work of poetry, for her book
Rough Music. She was also the winner of two
Pushcart Prizes. Digges translated the poems of the
Cuban poet María Elena Cruz Varela. A book of poetry,
The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart: Poems, was published by Knopf in 2010. ==Suicide==