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Lisa Alther (born July 23, 1944) is an American author and novelist.
She graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in English literature in 1966. She then attended the Publishing Procedures Course at Radcliffe College.
After graduation Alther worked briefly for Atheneum Books in New York before moving to rural Vermont. Alther wrote fiction steadily for years, without success, collecting more than 250 rejection slips without getting published. She was stubborn however, and determined to succeed. When she finally succeeded, with Kinflicks in 1975, the novel was phenomenally successful.
Alther now divides her time among East Tennessee, Vermont, and New York City. She has one daughter.
She has also written two non-fiction books, Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree—the Search for My Melungeon Ancestors (2007; ) and Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder and Vengeance (2012; ).
Alther has taught Southern fiction at Saint Michael's College in Winooski, Vermont, and at East Tennessee State University, where she was awarded the Basler Chair.
Between 1978 and 1980, Alther lived in London, where she became friends with Doris Lessing. Lessing took an interest in Kinflicks and helped get the work published in London through a contact at Alfred A. Knopf.
It was through Lessing that Alther met the writer, thinker and teacher of Sufism mysticism, Idries Shah. Shah had adapted many Sufi classical works and teaching stories for contemporary readers, and, taking a great interest in these works, Alther read them all, and she also wrote reviews for Shah's books, such as World Tales. In 2020 Alther received the Idries Shah Foundation Award for Human Achievement for “contributions to literature.”
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