bio

finalist for the restless books prize for new immigrant writing 2021

pen america emerging voices fellow 2021 in creative nonfiction. Final reading video: watch now. (44:00-49:55)

CURRENT PROJECTS:

LitHop 2022, AWP 2023, Hmong Legacy 50th Anniversary Exhibition (2025)

Lisa Lee Herrick is the daughter of Hmong refugees, and she is an award-winning Hmong-American writer, illustrator, and producer based in California. Her creative nonfiction is honored in the Best American Essays (2020; 2021) and Best American Food Writing 2020. In 2019, she was selected for a Writing X Writers fellowship at the Esalen Institute in California and named a finalist for the Paper Darts Short Fiction Prize. The following year, she was a finalist for the 2020 Ploughshares Emerging Writers’ Contest and longlisted for the Creative Capital Award. In May 2021, Lisa was awarded a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship and paired with best-selling Hmong American writer Kao Kalia Yang as her mentor. She was announced as a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2021 in September, and she is working on her debut book—a memoir in essays—as well as several publishing projects examining contemporary issues affecting the Hmong in diaspora.

Lisa is also the co-founder of Fresno’s LitHop literary arts festival, which she started after a decade working in journalism and television, and currently serves as Editor-at-Large for Hyphen magazine. She is also a regular contributor to The Rumpus, Emergence Magazine, and advises nonprofit arts & public broadcasting organizations in media strategy and community outreach. She has been featured in and/or appeared on PBS, NPR, FOX, ABS-CBN, The Fresno Bee, the Houston Chronicle and others. She has a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Davis, where her first published personal essay is permanently archived in the Department of English’s Prized Writing catalogue. Twitter: @lisaleeherrick

(photo: Lisa Lee Herrick)