Born in Wollongong, Deb Westbury spent most of her early life on the New South Wales coast south of Sydney. She worked as a teacher, sculptor and writer, and completed an undergraduate degree in teaching and a Master of Creative Arts degree in writing. Her poetry began to be published in the 1970s, and her first full-length collection (one of the five she ultimately published) appeared in 1990. Her final collection, the chapbook Winter in Stone Country, appeared in 2016.
In 1999, she was guest lecturer at the Catskill Poetry Workshop in the United States of America. In 2000, Westbury was writer in residence at James Cook University, Queensland. She was actively involved with the Poets' Union, The Australian Society of Authors, and Varuna Writers' Centre.
