Lise Funderburg’s latest book project is Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents, for which she commissioned and edited 25 original essays from writers around the country. Her previous book, Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home, was selected by Drexel University as its 2012 Freshman Read. Pig Candy could fit into several genres—including narrative nonfiction, memoir, travelogue, and biography—but essentially, it’s a book about life, death, and barbecue. Funderburg's annotated collection of oral histories, Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity, has become a core text in studies of American multiracial identity and race relations. It was recently released in a twentieth-anniversary edition that features updated commentary from original interviewees.
Funderburg teaches creative nonfiction at Penn, in workshops around the world, and in the MFA program at Rutgers-Camden. In all instances and despite all odds, she has a way of converting students into revision enthusiasts. Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, Salon, Cleaver, The Chattahoochee Review, National Geographic, Brevity, and Prevention. She has received support, fellowships, and residencies from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Leeway Foundation, Open Society Institute, Dick Goldensohn Fund for Journalists, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Thurber House, MacDowell Colony, and Blue Mountain Center. Funderburg studied at Reed College and the Columbia University School of Journalism, and she lives in Philadelphia’s Great Northwest. Photo by Giorgia Fanelli.
In 2019, Funderburg's Creative Nonfiction Workshop collaborated with community-based textile artists and artisans to present STITCHED at the Kelly Writers House. View it here.
