Alissa Butterworth

Alissa Butterworth is an author, editor, certified book coach and educator. She lives in the Mid-Atlantic region with her family, which includes a silly rescue hound named Scout and a boisterous toddler.

She received her MFA in fiction from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, and her BA in creative writing and English literature from Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA. Her work, both prose and poetry, has appeared online and in print in such publications as The Alumni Arts Review, Prolog and The Reading Eagle. Her short story "Concerning the Death of Leighton Caulfield" was named an honorable mention in the 11th Annual NYC Midnight Short Story Contest. Alissa was also a finalist in the 2019 NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest.

Alissa's short story "The Carriage Held But Just Ourselves" debuted as part of the Satellite Collective's Telephone international Art exhibit in the spring of 2021, and the piece was published in the accompanying print anthology put out by Crosstown Press.

Alissa has appeared on television and the radio, and has interned with both the Reading Eagle and Consequence magazine. In addition, she's worked as a reader for several literary magazines. Alissa's also a proud student committee alum of the Emerging Writer's Festival, hosted by Franklin and Marshall College, a week-long event for students and the larger community that brings new writers and poets to the Lancaster, PA area to foster literary culture each spring.

She has been the recipient of the Hensel Award, a Hackman summer research grant, and a Marshall Grant and scholarship from the Key West Literary Seminar to attend the "Emerging Writer's Seminar" in Key West, FL. She's pursued scholarly research and presented academic papers on topics as varied as religious influences in the dramas of Christopher Marlowe, to the emergence of the novel, to the function of an absent character in fiction.

Alissa's debut literary novel, To Die is Different than Supposed, is forthcoming in February '25 through River Grove Books. She is working on or currently hatching several other book-length projects, as well as shorter pieces. Though her primary genre is fiction, she also works in poetry, journalism, creative nonfiction and memoir. She has taught creative writing to young teens through graduate students, and runs a popular and longstanding Writer's Workshop. She is particularly interested in helping students discover (or rediscover) their own voices and gifts. Alissa has a rotating roster of other writing and literature classes she teaches, as well. In 2024, Alissa became a certified Book Coach in fiction through Author Accelerator, and is excited to get to work with writers in this new capacity going forward.