Based in Gainesville, Florida, Barbara Drake-Vera is a memoirist, fiction writer, and journalist who lived in Peru from 2007 to 2014. Her debut book is Melted Away: A Memoir of Climate Change and Caregiving in Peru (LSU Press, 2024), winner of the silver 2024 Florida Book Award for nonfiction and shortlisted for the 2025 Sarton Women's Book Award. Her essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Terrain, Wild Roof Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, and The Invading Sea, with short fiction in New Delta Review, Red Rock Review and Iris: A Journal for Women. Her writing has been supported with a 2025 residency from the Key West Literary Seminar, an Individual Artist Fellowship in Fiction from the State of Florida, and an Artist Access Grant from the Miami-Dade Cultural Affairs Council.

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 living in Peru from 2007 to 2014, she worked as a field producer for NBC Universal, assisting on the NBC Nightly News special “Melting Glaciers Lead to Water Wars” (8.1 million viewers) and breaking-news coverage for the TODAY Show, NBC Nightly News, and Dateline.

Four years into her time abroad, Drake-Vera brought her estranged father with Alzheimer’s to live with her family in Lima, a transformative event she shares in Melted Away. Since returning to the U.S. in 2014, she has advocated for family caregivers as the Florida District 3 ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Association and as a member of AlzAuthors, a global community of authors writing about dementia to light the way for others. Her passions also encompass speaking about climate change and mental health, and mentoring creative writers whose work addresses the consequences of living in a climate-precarious world.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from SUNY College at Purchase and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Florida.