Jan DeBlieu

Jan DeBlieu is an American writer whose work often focuses on how people are shaped by the landscapes in which they live. Her own writing has been influenced by her adopted home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

She is the author of four books including Hatteras Journal, Meant to Be Wild, Wind (which won the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Writing, the highest national honor for that genre) and Year of the Comets. Her fifth book, which examines living in service to others, is forthcoming. She also has published dozens of essays and magazine articles, both in literary journals and mainstream publications like The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Audubon, and Orion. Her work has been widely anthologized.

In 2003 she was named the Cape Hatteras Coastkeeper for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, a post she held until 2012. She has since returned to full-time writing.

While DeBlieu's work has mostly focused on naturally history, landscape, and place, this shifted after the death of her son in a car accident in 2009. Since then she has concentrated on exploring how ordinary people can help change the lives of people in need. This is the subject of her forthcoming book, Searching for Seva.

In 2006, she was featured in the book Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology edited by Lauret E. Savoy, Eldridge M. Moores, and Judith E. Moores (Trinity University Press) which looks at how writing pays a tribute to the Earth's geological features.