Barbara Drake-Vera is an award-winning memoirist, fiction writer, and journalist from Gainesville, Florida, who lived in Peru from 2007 to 2014. She is the author of Melted Away: A Memoir of Climate Change & Caregiving in Peru (LSU Press, 2024), shortlisted for the Sarton Women’s Book Award and a Florida Book Awards Silver Medalist. Her essays, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she received an Individual Artist Fellowship in Fiction from the State of Florida. Her journalism credits include 500+ features, arts reviews, and op-eds in NBC.com, The Village Voice, Huffington Post, Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, Florida Trend, and other outlets. While working as a Peru-based field producer for NBC Universal, Barbara helped with NBC Nightly News coverage of glacial recession and water wars in the Andes. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Florida, and will be appearing as part of the Florida Book Award non-fiction winners panel at this year’s Word of South.
Barbara Drake-Vera
