About

Lisa Birman is a poet and novelist. Her first novel, How To Walk Away (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2015), was awarded the Colorado Book Award in Literary Fiction. 

Lisa is the author of the poetry collection For That Return Passage – a Valentine for the United States of America (Hollowdeck Press). She is the editor of a collection of letters from Frances LeFevre to poet Anne Waldman, Dearest Annie, You wanted a report on Berkson’s class (Hanging Loose Press, 2016) and co-editor of the anthology Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (Coffee House Press). Her work has appeared in a wide range of well-respected poetry journals and she has published several chapbooks of poetry, including deportation poems and a trilogy of chapbooks in collaboration with Berlin-based singer/songwriter Josepha Conrad.  

Lisa has been teaching writing in the United States, Australia, and the Czech Republic for the past fifteen years. She served as the Director of the prestigious Summer Writing Program at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics for eleven years.

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Lisa moved to New York via Seattle in 1995.  She moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1997 to pursue her MFA in Writing and Poetics. Now a dual citizen, she’s still Australian at heart and often trades the Colorado winter for a few months of Melbourne summer to spend time with her family. 

Lisa resides in Boulder, Colorado, where she works as a freelance writer and editor. She is currently completing her third novel.