Deborah Stiles was a tenured humanities and rural studies professor at Dalhousie University's Faculty of Agriculture from 1998 to 2019. Born and raised in Appalachia, she has made Atlantic Canada her home (with occasional forays to West Virginia) since 1994. The author of the collections Riding Limestone and Movement Catalogued, Stiles has also published on regional, rural, and gender cultural studies and environmental humanities. She lives in Pictou County, Nova Scotia.