Background

Lisa Chavez was born on December 21, 1961, in Los Angeles, California; the daughter of William and Sandra (Sodwarft) Chavez.

Education

Lisa received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the United States University of Alaska, Fairbanks in 1987. Three years later she got a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University. In 1998 Lisa Chavez was given a Master of Arts at the University of Rochester. She also completed her doctoral studies.

Career

Lisa began her career as a lecturer at Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She worked there for a year, becoming an editorial assistant at Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in 1991. In 1992 she was appointed as an instructor in English at the University of Alaska, but already in a year Chavez held a post of volunteer instructor in English at Teacher Training College.

From 1996 to 1998 Lisa served as an adjunct faculty member of State University of New York Empire State College. In 1998 she became an assistant professor of English at Albion College. At the same college she worked as a member of steering committee for Center for Contemporary Expression in the Arts. Lisa also was an instructor in English as a foreign language at Nova Intercultural Institute.

Nowadays she is an Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico where she teaches Creative Writing and works as a workshop presenter.

Besides being an author, Lisa is also a contributor of poetry, articles, and short stories to journals, including Clackamas Literary Review, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, Luna, Blue Mesa Review, Americas Review, Main Street Rag, Poetry Motel, Exit 13, and Permafrost.

Achievements

• Lisa Chavez wrote two books of poetry, Destruction Bay and In An Angry Season. Her work represented in anthologies, including The Sky’s Own Light: Poems from Alaska, 1990; Rising to the Dawn: A Rape Survivor’s Journey into Healing, 1999; The Floating Borderlands: 25 Years of U.S., 1998; American Poetry: The Next Generation, 2000; and Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America.
  
  Lisa is also a recipient of Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and Jean Chaille memorial scholar.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets

    (In Mentor and Muse, a collection of twenty-nine insightfu...)

    2010
  • In an Angry Season

    (With an unexcelled command of narrative verse, Lisa Cháve...)

    2001
  • Destruction Bay 1999

Membership

Lisa Chavez is a member of the Associated Writing Programs and Phi Kappa Phi.

Interests

• dogs, international navel, fitness

Connections

Lisa Chavez was married to John Fannin. They divorced in 1992 and in 1993 Lisa married Steven K. Bailey.

Father:

William Chavez

Mother:

Sandra (Sodwarft) Chavez

Spouse:

Steven K. Bailey

ex-spouse:

John Fannin