About
Lisa C. Taylor is the author of the 2025 novel, The Shape of What Remains, three poetry collections and two short story collections, most recently Impossibly Small Spaces (2018). Her second novel is forthcoming in 2027. Lisa’s honors include the Hugo House New Works Fiction Award, Pushcart nominations in fiction and poetry and Best-of-the Net nominations in both categories. Her poetry collaboration with Irish writer Geraldine Mills, The Other Side of Longing received the Elizabeth Shanley Gerson Honor at University of Connecticut. Lisa holds an MFA in Creative Writing and is the co-director of the Mesa Verde Writers Conference and the Mesa Verde Literary Festival. Lisa has received writing residencies from Vermont Studio Center and Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. She teaches writing privately and online and offers workshops around the country. Lisa is the fiction editor for Wordpeace (www.wordpeace.co). She was a spotlight feature on the AWP website and a two-time mentor for the AWP writer-to-writer program. The anthology Four Corners Voices that she edited for Four Corners Writers won the Colorado Book Award for anthologies in 2025. www.lisactaylor.com
Featured Work
The Shape of What Remains
What did six-year-old Serena Calvano see that caused her to run in the road on a clear November morning while waiting for the school bus with her mother? Teresa Calvano has spent a decade blaming herself for Serena's violent death and wishing it was her husband, Luke who was with Serena that day so the guilt didn't fall so heavily on her shoulders. When her husband and friends lose patience with her failure to get back to life, Teresa turns to books, therapy, and Janis Joplin to address her continued unraveling. Is there a cure for grief? In Teresa's world, her research and life as a successful English professor fail to offer the one thing she most wants: another day with her six-year-old daughter.
