Lisa Wartenberg Vélez is a Colombian-born writer of fiction who split her childhood between South Florida and Bogotá. She is a 2023 graduate of the prestigious Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston (MFA), where she was an Inprint Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Fellow and a Cynthia Woods Mitchell Scholar. Their work can be found in Michigan Quarterly Review, Cutleaf Journal, Nimrod International Journal, Ghost Parachute, and Moot Point Journal, and in the anthologies 2025 Rural Writers of Color (EastOver Press), edited by Deesha Philyaw, and the 2025 Ghost Parachute Anthology (ed. Brett Pribble). They have received creative and/or financial support from Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Tin House Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow. She is also an alum of Tony Thulatimutte's CRIT Works. 

 

Lisa was the recipient of the 2021 Francine Ringold Award for New Writers and the 2022 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Katharine Bakeless Nason Contributor Award in Fiction, and finalist for both the 2022 Passages North Waasnode Fiction Prize and the Master's Review Anthology XI. Her debut short story was named a winner of the 2023 PEN / Robert J Dau Prize, and is anthologized in Best Debut Short Stories 2023 (Catapult Books). 

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In addition, Lisa serves as Deputy Editor at Conjunctions, where she was previously a Senior Editor. Before Conjunctions, she served as a Assistant Fiction Editor at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts during her time as a graduate student. They have taught Fiction Workshops at Inprint and others.

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A lifelong storyteller, Lisa also has degrees in theatre, from New York University (BA) and the University of Houston (MFA), which she taught at Rice University, University of Houston, and others. 

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Lisa lives in Vermont with their family.