Lissa is the founding director of The Poetry Barn, a pollinator habitat for poetry in the Hudson Valley, and AIM Higher, a nonprofit that celebrates artists. She lives in the Catskill Mountains near the Ashokan Reservoir’s spillway with her husband, Chris, and a fluctuating number of felines.

Lissa Kiernan’s second collection of poetry, The Whispering Wall, won Homebound Publications’ Poetry Prize and was a semi-finalist for the Dorset Prize. Her first book of prose, Glass Needles & Goose Quills, won the Nautilus Gold for lyric prose and took first place in the Independent Book Awards’ cross-genre category. Two Faint Lines in the Violet, Lissa’s first poetry collection, was a finalist for both the Foreword Indies and Julie Suk awards. Individual poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her soundtracks have been adapted by filmmakers Othniel Smith and Marc Neys and set to original compositions by American composer James Johnston.