Lise Funderburg
Lise Kristin Funderburg is an American writer and editor. She is the author of Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home, and Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity. One of the first books to explore the lives of adult children of black-white unions, Black, White, Other is a core text in the study of American multiracial identity.
Early life and education
Lise Funderburg was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1959. She is the youngest of three daughters born to George Newton Funderburg and Marjorie Jeane Funderburg . Funderburg was raised in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Powelton Village, a relatively stable racially mixed community that countered . As a child, Funderburg regularly attended services and Sunday School at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, the same church where her parents had married, which was significant at the time, as more than 17 states still forbade interracial marriage.Funderburg attended the local kindergarten at Samuel Powel public school, then attended grades 1 through 12 at Friends’ Central School, a private Quaker school located on the boundary line between the city and the Main Line suburbs. After graduating from Friends’ Central, she studied for two years at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, then transferred to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. While at Reed, she spent a term in London before graduating in the class of 1982. Funderburg soon moved to the Boston area, where she spent a year waitressing at Legal Sea Foods before she got her first job in publishing.
In 1988, Funderburg moved to New York city, took a job as managing editor at Avenue magazine for almost two years, then went to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, from which she graduated in 1991. Her master’s thesis sparked the idea for her first book, Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity, and she built a career in New York as a freelance writer and editor.
Career
In 1996, she moved back to her hometown of Philadelphia, settling in Mt. Airy, another of the city’s longstanding integrated neighborhoods. In addition to writing and editing, Funderburg began teaching, mostly at the university level but also in public and private settings as well as one-on-one manuscript consultations through the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. Funderburg has taught at Ohio State University, Rutgers University-Camden, the, and, since 2003, at the University of Pennsylvania. Her specialty is creative nonfiction workshops, with an emphasis on revision. In addition to manuscript consultations, Funderburg has been a project editor and long-term substitute editor with such publications as Vogue, Time Out New York, Garden Design, O, the Oprah Magazine, O at Home, Lucky, Mirabella, US Air, Self, and Mademoiselle.In 2004, Funderburg married John Reynolds Howard, father to Lise’s stepson. John Howard is an architect who appears from time to time in Funderburg’s essays and books, especially her 2008 social history/memoir, Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home. Funderburg continues to write, teach and edit from her base in Philadelphia. She is also a public speaker, and has spoken at such venues as Colby College, Bard College, Bryn Mawr College, UC Santa Cruz, Community College of Philadelphia; New York University, The Southern Festival of Books, Rutgers University, Rhode Island College, Swarthmore College, and NonfictioNow.
In 2019, The University of Nebraska Press published Apple, Tree: Writers on their Parents, a collection of original essays by writers such as Ann Patchett, Daniel Mendelsohn, Laura Van Den Berg, Mat Johnson, kyoko Mori, Sallie Tisdale, Bear Bergman, and Shukree Tilghman. Funderburg conceived of, commissioned, and edited this anthology as a way to showcase and reflect on that pivotal moment in life when people realize they have turned into their parents.
Published work
Lise Funderburg's journalism has appeared in publications including The New York Times, TIME, Newsday, The Nation, O, the Oprah magazine, The New York Observer, American Demographics, The Chicago Tribune, City Limits, Metropolis, Elle, Time Out New York, Mirabella, African American Review, Essence, Glamour, Hungry Mind Review, National Geographic, More, Country Living, Garden Design, The Nation, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her essays have been published in Threepenny Review, Harper's, New England Review, Cleaver, Brevity, GourmetLive, Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. Her book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Newsday, Quarterly Black Review, Mirabella, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Hungry Mind Review, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.Selected articles and essays
, Cimarron Review, Spring/Summer 2022, The Threepenny Review, Fall 2021
, National Geographic, October 2013
, More, September 2011
, GourmetLive, March 16, 2011
, O, the Oprah Magazine, February 2003
, O the Oprah Magazine, November 2001
, LIFE, May 2000
, The Nation, June 5, 2000
, TIME, December 18, 2000
, TIME, November 13, 2000
, The New York Times Magazine, November 7, 1999
, The Nation, December 14, 1998
, Hungry Mind Review, Spring 1998
Awards and honors
2013 Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, Umbria, Italy2012 First Prize for Narrative Nonfiction Feature Story, American Society of Journalists & Authors
2012 Drexel University selects Pig Candy for its Freshman Reading Program
2011 Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival selects Black, White, Other as best representation of the mixed-race experience in films and literature
2004, 2006 City Gardens Contest 2nd Prize for Individual Flower Garden, Philadelphia, PA
2004 Puffin Foundation Grant
2003, 2004 MacDowell Colony residency, Peterborough, NH
2003 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Nonfiction Fellowship
2002 Leeway Foundation Window of Opportunity Grant, Philadelphia, PA
1999, 1997 The Thurber House writer in residence, Columbus, OH
1997 The Dick Goldensohn Fund Projects grant, NY, NY
1996 Blue Mountain Center writer’s residency, Blue Mountain Lake, NY
Books
., with a foreword by Oprah Winfrey
Anthology contributions
By the Editors of O, The Oprah MagazineEdited by Randall Kennedy, Gerald Early
Edited by Kathleen R. Gilbert
Edited by Michael J. Rosen
Edited by Afaa Michael Weaver
Edited by Michael J. Rosen
Edited by Raymond D’Angelo
Edited by Lillian Bridwell-Bowles