Lise Funderburg

Lise Funderburg was born in 1959 and educated at Reed College and Columbia University. Her latest book is narrative nonfiction: Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home (Free Press), a contemplation of life, death, and barbecue. Her first book was a collection of oral histories, Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity, the first to explore the lives of adult children of black-white unions. She has been a regular contributor since 2001 to O, the Oprah Magazine and has written a book about the Tony-winning musical The Color Purple. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared widely in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, Salon, Newsday, and many other publications.

Funderburg won a 2003 Nonfiction Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and has twice been selected as the writer-in-residence at The James Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. She has received grants from the Dick Goldensohn Fund for Journalists, The Leeway Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation. Funderburg has been awarded residencies at The Blue Mountain Center and the MacDowell Colony. A graduate of Reed College and Columbia Journalism School, Funderburg also teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, John Howard.