Penn Arts & Sciences Logo

Lise Funderburg

(she/her/hers)

Office Hours

spring 2022

Office hours by appointment.

Lise Funderburg is a writer and editor based in Philadelphia. She studied at Reed College and the Columbia University School of Journalism, and her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, National Geographic, Salon, The Nation, More, Brevity, Cleaver, Broad Street, and The Chattahoochee Review.

 

Her latest book is Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents (University of Nebraska, 2019), a collection of all-new work by 25 writers, which Publishers Weekly deemed a “sparkling anthology” in its starred review. Her previous book was Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home (Free Press, 2008), which was chosen as the Drexel University Freshman Read in 2012. Pig Candy fits into several genres—including narrative nonfiction, memoir, travelogue, and biography—but essentially, it’s a book about life, death, and barbecue.

 

Lise’s first book was a prescient collection of oral histories, Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity (Morrow, 1994), the first book to explore the lives of adult children of black-white unions. Black, White, Other, expanded and re-released on its 20th anniversary, has become a core text in the study of American multiracial identity. In her New York Times review of Black, White, Other, Kyoko Mori wrote that the book is “an example of how we can talk about race with feeling, humor, and dignity.”

 

Lise has been awarded residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Thurber House, and Blue Mountain, among others, and she won a Nonfiction Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and teaches at the Paris Writers’ Workshop.

For more information, see www.lisefunderburg.com

Publications

Courses Taught

spring 2024

ENGL 3355.301 Memoir Workshop  

spring 2023

spring 2022

spring 2021

spring 2020

fall 2019

spring 2019

spring 2018

ENGL 135.301 Creative Nonfiction  

spring 2017

ENGL 145.301 Advanced Nonfiction Writing  

spring 2016

ENGL 145.301 Advanced Nonfiction Writing  

spring 2015

ENGL 145.302 Advanced Nonfiction Writing  

spring 2014

ENGL 145.302 Advanced Nonfiction Writing  

spring 2013

fall 2011

fall 2010

fall 2009

fall 2008

ENGL 145.302 Advanced Nonfiction Writing  

fall 2007

fall 2006

spring 2006

fall 2005

fall 2004

fall 2003