Awards

  • Rogue Waves: Love in the Wake of Bipolar Disorder (excerpt) – Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books, Nov-Dec 2023
    • “I don’t blame Doug for not telling me earlier. After all, he’d transgressed no law, instigated no fight, wished no wrong toward another. There was no guilt to assign, no penance to be paid; the disorder was simply his reality. Often it lay dormant or percolated imperceptibly below his surface. Other times, it fought to emerge as Doug tried to stifle it—a master and servant relationship with flip-flopping roles. Sometimes Doug played master, controlling his illness with medication and lifestyle choices. But the disease was sneaky—it creeped, it crawled, it hid, it exploded— gradually, or sometimes suddenly taking over, relegating Doug to host and servant.”

Essays

  • “The Skating Program” in Sport Literate, Late Fall 2021
    • “The space feels hollow and dark as I wait for cues of light and sound, the
      first beats of my program. Soon others will judge me. But for now, I’m
      cocooned by my own obscurity.”
  • “Our Seasons” in Hypertext Review, Spring/Summer 2022
    • “In springtime, when the first daffodil pushes its yellow head from brown soil, an airiness rises from my core and blossoms throughout my chest. As daylight hours expand, I rush outside and embrace an annual explosion of life.”
  • “Irreversible” in HeartWood Literary Magazine, Spring 2023
    • “Dogs bark as I ring the bell, but they quiet when the key turns. I open the door to my brother’s house, and they rush outside to pee. They’re alert and alive, so I think I’ve made it in time.”
  • “Separation Anxiety” in Writer’s Foundry Review, Spring 2023
    • “I want to gather memories from before Mom’s accident and Dad’s Alzheimer’s, pump blood into those recollections, breathe life into the past. Then, I would fling the animated images into this wood-paneled den, so I could undo Mom’s death, dismiss Dad’s forgetfulness, ignore any signs of their aging.” 
  • “The Dress” in HerStry, October 9, 2024
    • Dresses clothe bodies, symbolize milestones, and evoke emotions.
      For me, they also hold the power to weave grief and love.

Poetry

  • “Gravity” in The Closed Eye Open, February 2022
    • Mystical
      windows break
      open in the midst of
      childhood, revealing loopholes
      in steadfast rules, turning improbable
      to possible. Objects go up, not
      down, rebels escaping
      from gravity’s
      laws of
      confinement….

 

Book Reviews

  • Review of Sheila Hamilton’s All the Things We Never Knew: Chasing the Chaos of Mental Illness “ – Sierra Nevada Review Blog
  • Review of Gayle Brandeis’ The Art of Misdiagnosis: Surviving My Mother’s Suicide – Bookin’ With Sunny
  • Review of Rebecca Evans’ Tangled by Blood: a memoir in verseThe Writing Disorder

 

Academic

  • Alice C. Fu, Lisa Peterson, Archana Kannan, Richard J. Shavelson & Amy Kurpius (2015) A Framework for Summative Evaluation in Informal Science Education, Visitor Studies, 18:1, 17-38, DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2015.1016363
  • Alice C. Fu, Archana Kannan, Richard J. Shavelson, Lisa Peterson & Amy Kurpius (2016) Room for Rigor: Designs and Methods in Informal Science Education Evaluation, Visitor Studies, 19:1, 12-38, DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2016.1144025
  • Lisa Peterson (1997) Time Management for Library Professionals, Katherine Sharp Review, Issue 5, Summer.
  • Lisa Peterson (1997) Effective Question Negotiation in the Reference Interview, Current Studies in Librarianship, Vol. 21, Nos. 1 and 2, Spring/Fall.

 

Current Projects

Lisa is currently seeking representation for her debut memoir, Rogue Waves: Love in the Wake of Bipolar Disorder.