Meet Lisa, gardener of flowers, words, and love.

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill could have been looking ahead, thinking about Little Patuxent Review’s volunteer staff. Each works tirelessly behind the scenes to read your submissions, edit the draft and design the final printed journal. In other words, it means something to them when your work gets published (almost as much as it does to you). As review continues on the Myth issue submissions, let’s continue to meet our volunteers.

Lisa Lynn Biggar began reading fiction submissions for Little Patuxent Review in 2013.  She received her MFA in Fiction from Vermont College and is currently marketing her first novel, We Were Here. Her short fiction has appeared in The Dickinson Review, The Main Street Rag, Bluestem Magazine, Roadside Fiction, The Little Patuxent Review, and is forthcoming in The Minnesota Review.  She currently teaches English at Chesapeake College and co-owns and operates a cut flower farm on the eastern shore of Maryland with her husband and four cats.

What’s your process for going through submissions? I give each quality submission an honest read. Sometimes a piece that starts off slow can surprise me in the end.

When you’re reading a submission, what draws you most about a piece? There is no one thing, but I do like character-driven plots, be it realism or magic realism.

What turns you off immediately when you read a submission? Rambling for the sake of rambling, not the story.

Who has informed your reading tastes most? Why? Virginia Woolf and Milan Kundera—such a musical, meandering flow to their work, but nothing beyond the stories at hand.

What’s on your nightstand right now to be read?  One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Are you also a writer/poet? If so, tell us more. If so, tell us more.Yes. I have an MFA in Fiction from VT College and write and publish fiction and poetry. I am currently marketing my first novel, We Were Here.

What’s your Six-Word Memoir: Gardener of flowers, words, and love.

Do you have any superpowers? If not, what do you wish you had? I wish I could jump into the skin of other people and feel what it’s like to be them for just an hour or so.

Online Editor’s Note: You stay abreast of Lisa’s writing, publication, and speaking schedule by visiting her website: www.writinglisa.com. A reminder that LPR’s Summer submission period is “open.” We welcome your creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art.