Writing fellow of the MacDowell Colony (2011), Blue Mountain Center (2012 and 2013), and Hedgebrook (2015)

Lisa Garrigues brings to Writing Motherhood many years of experience as a mother, teacher, and award-winning writer. She earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley and a master's degree in English education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has been awarded numerous writing fellowships over the years—by the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, and Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island in Washington’s Puget Sound.

In the past decade, Lisa has created and led a variety of classes and workshops in writing memoir, many of them exclusively for women. In addition to Writing Motherhood, her most popular courses include Writing Womanhood, Micromemoir: Writing from the Middle, and The Writers' Circle. Lisa has also collaborated with other artists and educators to create such innovative offerings as Words in Motion, a creativity workshop that combines writing with movement and composition with choreography, and Talking Art, a writers' field trip to the museum. Certified in New York and New Jersey, Lisa has taught English at the middle and high school levels, in both public and independent schools.

Lisa brings to her teaching a strong background in writing. After college, she worked first in corporate communications, penning stories for an international corporation's feature magazine, then for nonprofit organizations, creating development and communications materials for clients that included the National Gallery of Art and Wellesley College. Since becoming a mother, she has turned her pen to the topics of motherhood and education, publishing personal stories in area newspapers as well as scholarly articles in trade journals.

Several years ago, Lisa set out to explore in writing all the lessons she had learned about being a writer, a teacher, and a mother. The result, her first book—Writing Motherhood: Tapping into Your Creativity as a Mother and a Writer—was published in April 2007 as a Scribner hardcover, and released in paperback in May 2008. She is currently at work on her second book, a memoir.

In recognition of Lisa's commitment as an educator and example as a writer, she was presented with the 2007 "Women of Inspiration" Award, co-sponsored by the National Association of Women Business Owners and Fairleigh Dickinson University. This prestigious award honors women of initiative and leadership who have created environments that support other women in their communities. She also received the 2004 Paul and Kate Farmer Writing Award, granted by the National Council of Teachers of English for the most distinguished article published that year in English Journal.