Bio
Lisa Pasold is a writer and journalist who divides her time between Paris and Canada. Her first book of poetry WEAVE, was hailed as a masterpiece by Geist. Her second book of poetry, A BAD YEAR FOR JOURNALISTS, was nominated for an Alberta Book Award. The Globe and Mail called this new poetry collection "critical, darkly funny and painstakingly lyrical." Her debut novel, RATS OF LAS VEGAS, was desribed as "enticing as the lit-up Las Vegas strip and as satisfying as a winning hand at poker" by The Winnipeg Free Press. And Freefall described the book as "the incredible experience of being told a story rather than reading a book. As if reading a fairy tale, you are pulled into Millard's world, and it is a world so compelling that you can't bring yourself to leave."
Lisa creates walking tours inspired by research for her books. She has led walks all over Paris, investigating the lives of artists & writers throughout the centuries in the City of Light. She has also created walks for Toronto & Saskatoon.
Lisa leads annual workshops about inspiration and about writing family history/memoir. She taught Creative Writing at the American University in Paris, and has led workshops for the Paris Writers' Workshop and WICE (Women's Institute of Continuing Education, France). While writer-in-residence at the Berton Writer’s Retreat in Dawson City, Yukon, she organized a community writing workshop; more recently, she co-led a writing workshop with a group of children in the Jane & Finch area of Toronto. In March 2012, she'll lead a one-day workshop at the American Library in Paris.
As a journalist, Lisa has published articles in newspapers and magazines such as The Globe and Mail, The Chicago Tribune, The National Post, Billboard Magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle. She has also written for guidebooks such as Fodor's, Time Out, and Michelin. Below are links to a few of her favourite journalism gigs:
The Klondike capital is one of my favourite places on this wonderful planet of ours, and it was a special thrill to drive from Whitehorse to Dawson in a van with 5 film-makers, 12 cameras and a banjo, to cover Dawson City's International Short Film Festival.
I was thrilled to cover Danish urban planner extraordinaire, Jan Gehl's talk at Toronto's Design Exchange for BlogTO. Founder of Gehl Architects and a retired Urban Design professor at Copenhagen's School of Architecture, Gehl is an incredibly charming, articulate, and exuberant proponent of the walkable city.
I had a blast working on the Paris section of this Fodor's Guide to Dan Brown's best-selling novel, edited by the fabulous Jennifer Paull. The book has a great team of contributors, and we had a lot of fun sorting through the real & the invented history in the novel.
