Lisa Roney

A native of Tennessee and a devotee of the Great Smoky Mountains, Lisa Roney started listening to stories in the southern tradition early in her life. She has since traveled far from home and resides in Orlando, Florida, where the gators sometimes visit the pond across from her house, and hawks and eagles screech from above.

 

In her travels, she earned a BA in art from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and MFA and PhD degrees in English from Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. She was on the English and Creative Writing faculty at the University of Central Florida 2003-2022. Her areas of interest include fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, disability and women's studies, medical humanities, and writing about history and family.

 

Winner of several teaching awards over the years, Lisa also developed numerous new courses and led a redesign of the undergraduate Creative Writing curriculum at UCF. In addition to teaching creative nonfiction and fiction workshops, she taught courses in editing and in contemporary literature. From 2015-2020 she was editor and director of The Florida Review and Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.