Lisa Borders’s second novel, The Fifty-First State, will be published by Engine Books in October, 2013. Her first novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing’s Fred Bonnie Award in 2002, and received fiction honors in the 2003 Massachusetts Book Awards. Lisa’s short stories have appeared in Kalliope, Washington Square, Black Warrior Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Newport Review and other journals, and her essay, "Enchanted Night" was published in Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes (Simon & Schuster, 2007). She has also contributed pieces on Kate Bush and R.E.M. to Scott Heim's The First Time I Heard, a series collecting essays on beloved bands. Lisa teaches at Grub Street, Boston's independent writing center, and works as a cytotechnologist.