Lisa Knopp is the author of five collections of essays -- What the River Carries, Interior Places, The Nature of Home, Flight Dreams: A Life in the Midwestern Landscape, and Field of Vision -- each of which explores the concepts of place, home, nature, and spirituality. Her most recent collection, What the River Carries: Encounters with Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte, is forthcoming from the University of Missouri Press in April 2012. Knopp's essays have appeared in many of the best publications, including Shenandoah, Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, Connecticut Review, Creative Nonfiction, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, and Northwest Review. Six of her essays have received Notable Essay citations in the Best American Essays series (1991, 1994, 2001, 2001, 2008, 2010).
Knopp was born and raised in Burlington, Iowa, and received her education at the University of Iowa, Iowa Wesleyan College, Western Illinois University, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, where she teaches courses in creative nonfiction, and is visiting faculty in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Nonfiction at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, near her son and daughter.