A Canadian by birth, a high school dropout, and a mother at 17, Lily Iona MacKenzie supported herself as a stock girl and a cocktail waitress. She briefly broke into the male-dominated world of the docks as a longshoreman, where she almost got her legs broken. She founded and managed a homeless shelter; co-created “The Story Shoppe,” a weekly radio program for children; and eventually earned two Master’s degrees (one in Creative writing and one in the Humanities).In addition to publishing her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction., she has published four novels, Fling!, Freefall: A Divine Comedy, Curva Peligrosa and the just released sequel to Freefall, The Ripening: A Canadian Girl Grows Up. Ms. MacKenzie currently teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco’s Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning. You can find her blog here.
