Lisa Borders

Photo by Aram Boghosian

Praise for Cloud Cuckoo Land

"Lisa Borders writes with amazing grace in this first novel. Through her character, the young Miri Ortiz, Borders reveals the profound significances that underlie the seemingly mundane events of our daily lives and articulates, in an often lyrical style, the deeper emotional realities out of which "ordinary" occurrences arise."

-- The selection committee for the Massachusetts Book Awards, in awarding 2003 Fiction Honors to Cloud Cuckoo Land

"Music infuses this novel -- from the Easter pageant where young Miri shines, to the world of 1980s indie rock bands. For readers, love of music is optional. Miri is the draw. At once innocent and cunning, living by a moral code forged by instinct, heart, and pragmatism, she evokes other young protagonists, from Huck Finn to Holden Caulfield to Bone in Russell Banks' Rule of the Bone."

-- Karen Jenkins Holt, in ForeWord magazine

“Lisa Borders is a born storyteller, and Cloud Cuckoo Land marks a grand debut by this talented writer. At once a coming of age story and a chronicle of a bygone musical age, Cloud Cuckoo Land is remarkable for its scope, style, and wonderfully big heart.”

-- Bret Lott, author of Jewel

"Cloud Cuckoo Land is an absolute original by a fresh new voice in fiction."

-- Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides and My Losing Season

"This redemptive story of a talented young woman's musical journey will make your heart sing."

-- Cassandra King, author of The Sunday Wife

"Lisa Borders is that rare kind of writer readers long for: incisive, funny, compassionate and altogether inimitable. Her short stories are always so seductive and engaging, the reader is reluctant to leave the page. Now Lisa Borders has given readers something to shout about, a masterful first novel filled with characters we can sink our teeth and hearts into. Cloud Cuckoo Land and its wonderful heroine Miri are unforgettable."

-- Denise Gess, author of Firestorm at Peshtigo

Books:

Lisa Borders is the author of the novel Cloud Cuckoo Land (River City Publishing, 2002) and a contributor to the anthology Don't You Forget About Me (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Lisa's first novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, won River City Publishing's Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel and was published in 2002. Cloud Cuckoo Land went on to win Fiction Honors in the 2003 Massachusetts Book Awards, and was a finalist for both the Independent Publisher (IPPY) Awards and the Foreword Fiction Book of the Year.

Moving from the blues and country music scene of East Texas in the late 1970s to the underground rock scene of the Northeast in the 1980s, Cloud Cuckoo Land tells the story of a young female street musician’s search for home -- and the unlikely place where she finds one.

An anthology of essays on the films of John Hughes, including Lisa's "Enchanted Night," which she wrote about the film Sixteen Candles. Published by Simon & Schuster in 2007 and edited by Jaime Clarke.

Excerpts from Cloud Cuckoo Land have won the following awards:

Chapter 1, published in CrossConnect as "The Day Prairie Rose, Texas Disappeared From the Map," won the Open Voice Fiction Award from the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in 1996.

Chapters 2 and 3 were published in Bananafish as "Easter," and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 1999.

read the Talk Show interview about Lisa's childhood obsession with David Cassidy and the Partridge Family

read a Boston Globe article about Lisa's writing

read what the Boston Globe said about Lisa's weekend novel-writing workshops

take a writing workshop with Lisa at Grub Street Writers

Foreword magazine's review of Cloud Cuckoo Land

kmareka.com review

for book clubs: a reading guide for Cloud Cuckoo Land

e-mail Lisa

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