Author Biography
Lyzette Wanzer's work appears in over thirty literary journals, magazines, books, and newspapers. Library Journal named her book, TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narratives, a Top 10 Best Social Sciences Book. Her articles have appeared in Essay Daily, The Naked Truth, and the San Francisco University High School Journal. Her research interests include professional development for creative writers, Black feminism, critical race theory, and the lyrical essay form.
Lyzette served as judge of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition's Intercultural Essay category from 2018 - 2023, and the Women's National Book Association's Effie Lee Morris Writing Contest's Fiction category in 2021. She presents her work at conferences across the country, including the American and Popular Culture Association, Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), College English Association, Cultural Studies Association, Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture Since 1900, Modern Language Association. San Francisco Writers Conference, The Society for the Study of African American Life and History, and Southern Humanities Council. In August 2021 and 2023 she produced her own multi-day virtual conference, Trauma, Tresses, & Truth: A Conference Interrogating Black Women's Natural Hair, featuring panels, workshops, webinars, and readings examining the policing, perception, politics, and persecution of Black women's natural hair.
A National Writers' Union and Authors Guild member, Lyzette has been awarded writing residencies at Blue Mountain Center (NY), Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts (NE), Playa Summer Lake (OR), Horned Dorset Colony (NY), Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow (AR), Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada, PlySpace (IN), The Anderson Center (MN), and Santa Fe Arts Institute (NM). Montalvo Arts Center has named her a 2023-2025 Lucas Arts Fellow. Her work has been supported with grants from Center for Cultural Innovation, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Black Artist Foundry, The Awesome Foundation, and California Humanities, a National Endowment for the Humanities partner.
- Purchase Trauma, Tresses, & Truth--the book!
- Watch replays of Trauma, Tresses, & Truth--the conference!
- See the Trauma, Tresses, & Truth project website