Lise Funderburg writes books, essays, and articles. Her latest book is Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents, for which she commissioned and edited 25 original essays from writers around the country. Funderburg’s memoir, Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home, was selected by Drexel University as its 2012 Freshman Read. Pig Candy could fit into several genres—including narrative nonfiction, memoir, travelogue, and biography—but essentially, it’s a book about life, death, and barbecue. Her first book, the annotated collection of oral histories called Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity, has become a core text in studies of American multiracial identity and race relations. It was recently released in a twentieth-anniversary edition that features updated commentary from original interviewees.
Lise teaches creative nonfiction at Penn and in workshops online around the world. In all instances and despite all odds, she has a way of converting students into becoming revision enthusiasts. Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, Salon, Cleaver, The Chattahoochee Review, National Geographic, Cimarron Review, The New England Review, and Threepenny Review. She has received support, fellowships, and residencies from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Leeway Foundation, Open Society Institute, Dick Goldensohn Fund for Journalists, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Thurber House, MacDowell Colony, and Blue Mountain Center. She studied at Reed College and the Columbia University School of Journalism, and she lives in Philadelphia, PA, and Ghent, NY.
