Biography
Lisa Fishman is Professor of Creative Writing in the School of Communication and Culture and former Director for the MFA and BA Poetry Programs as well as MFA Creative Writing Director. She is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently One Big Time (Wave Books, 2025). She is also the author of a recent short story collection, World Naked Bike Ride (Gaspereau Press, 2022) and is completing an experimental “nonfiction novel” for a Canadian publisher. She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize nominee, and a finalist for the ReLit Award in Short Fiction (Canada). Her poetry and prose appear in such journals as Granta, Jubilat, Denver Quarterly, VOLT, The Rupture; her poetry is anthologized in Best American Experimental Poetry, The Ecopoetry Anthology, The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral, and elsewhere. Reviews of Fishman’s work appear in Boston Review, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, American Poet/The Academy of American Poets, Rain Taxi, Fiddlehead Review, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review and other journals. She is also the author of several chapbooks, including at the same time as scattering (Albion Books). Fishman was the first Lorine Niedecker Writer in Residence and has been in residence at Banff. She completed a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training certification program in 2019 and regularly teaches poetry, mixed-genre, hybrid and experimental writing as well as literature and a course she created, Writing Death and Dying. A dual US/Canadian who also operates a farm in Wisconsin, she holds a B. A. from Michigan State University and MFA from Western Michigan University.
Degrees
B.A., English Michigan State University 1988
M.F.A., Creative Writing Western Michigan University 1992