Is your story or book missing something? Does your story drag? Do you have writers’ block? Join Lisa Cupolo, winner of the W.S. Porter Prize and author of the critically acclaimed Have Mercy on Us as she talks about writing and creating meaningful conflict in any story.

Lisa has been a paparazzi photographer, an aid worker in Kenya, a script doctor in Los Angeles, and a literary publicist at HarperCollins in Toronto. Her stories have been published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Narrative, The Idaho Review, and others. She holds a BA in philosophy from The University of Western Ontario, a graduate degree in portrait photography from The London Institute, and an MFA from the University of Memphis. She has lived all over the world but currently resides in Southern California, where she teaches fiction writing at Chapman University.