Lisa Nikolidakis holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and faculty advisor of P.R.I.D.E.. She writes nonfiction and fiction, returning often to themes of trauma, mental health, chronic illness, music, and nature. She also writes humor, mostly for survival.

Nikolidakis’s memoir, No One Crosses the Wolf, about the traumas of a perilous childhood, a shattering murder-suicide, and a healing journey from escape to survival to recovery is out with Little A.

Her essay “Family Tradition” was selected by Jonathan Franzen for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2016. Other writing of hers has won various prizes and mentions, including the Annie Dillard Prize for Creative Nonfiction 2021, Gulf Coast Prize, Indiana Review’s Fiction Prize, the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, the Calvino Prize, A Room of Her Own’s Orlando Prize, Cincinnati Review’s Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Prose, Hunger Mountain’s Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize, The Briar Cliff Review’s Annual Nonfiction Contest, and The Chattahoochee Review’s Lamar York Prize.

Her aim is to help demystify the shame of trauma by continuing to write and speak publicly about it.

She’s represented by Rayhané Sanders @ Massie & McQuilkin, who can be reached at rayhane@mmqlit.com