ABOUT ME

Hi, I’m Lisa Alexander, an editor and writer who focuses on fiction and food. As Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Edible LA Magazine, I spend my days interviewing tiger-striped tomatoes on their childhood memories. Edible LA is the largest territory of Edible Communities, a James Beard Award winning national network of over 90 publications, and serves as the food hub of one of the nation’s most vibrant food scenes. Most recently, I’ve been doing experiential travel writing and chef profiles or our Edible Explorer column, taking me to such locations as Turks & Caicos, Jamaica, Tuscany, Paris, London and Rome.

I have a BA from Barnard in Writing and Film, a MA in Clinical Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and—my favorite—a MFA in Fiction from Bennington College. In another life, I spent fifteen years in the movie biz, and exec produced a mini series for which I was Emmy-nominated. The mini series itself, starring Julianna Margulies, Joan Allen and Anjelica Huston, reached 30 million people. It was nominated for nine Emmy Awards and won one Emmy Award.

My fiction has appeared in such literary journals as Fifth Wednesday, Litro, Meridian, Prick of the Spindle, Fugue, Southern California Review, Cimarron, and the anthology, Mourning Sickness (OmniArts press). The New Short Fiction Series, L.A.'s longest running spoken-word series, has done a solo evening of my work. I’ve also won a few prizes—the Fugue Prose Award and the UCLA James Kirkwood Fiction Award.

What interests me most in food writing is sensuality and memory. In fiction, it’s what I call The Between. The place that has yet to come into focus. Two people and the fraught place between. Borders is another way to look at it. Illegal and legal. The border between my skin and yours. Civilized and wild. Herons, peacocks, raccoons, coyotes, pumas, sharks – wildlife walks in and out of my stories all the time.

The Carnivores Next Door is my linked short story collection, riffing on power and predation as well as the search for connection. All I Want is Everything, my novel, is about a vanishing on one of the Channel Islands, an insistent siren, and two couples falling in and out of lust and love.