Lisa Johnson Mitchell is a seasoned copywriter, as well as a fiction writer, editor, storyteller, screenwriter, filmmaker, and playwright. Her collection of short stories is out now from Finishing Line Press. She’s also a Short Story Instructor for Project Write Now.
Lisa began her career on Madison Avenue with stints at Wells, Rich Green; Della Femina, Travisano and Partners; BBDO and Ogilvy & Mather. After a few years back East, she moved to Dallas, where she worked at t:m (formerly Temerlin McClain); Integer, Rapp Collins, and WFAA-TV.
A graduate of Southern Methodist University, Lisa also holds an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars, where she was mentored by Rachel Pastan, Alice Mattison, Jill McCorkle and David Gates. During her last term, she was an Assistant Graduate Fellow in Fiction.
In addition to being a Contributing Editor to the Rivanna Review, one of her stories was a Finalist in the 2022 London Independent Story Prize Competition and was selected for their 2023 Anthology Rising Stars & Promising Pens. She has a story in the 2022 print issue of the Button Eye Review, where she took First Place in their 2021 Summer Contest. Another piece placed in the Top 10 in the 2020 Columbia Journal Spring Contest judged by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train in the 2017 Fiction Open and was a Semi-Finalist in the ScreenCraft 2016 Cinematic Short Story Contest (top 50 out of 2,000) Other work has been published in Emerge Literary Journal, X-R-A-Y, Fictive Dream, Five on the Fifth, Rivanna Review, Louisiana Literature, Cleaver, Rumble Fish Quarterly (Fall 2018 Double-Dealers), Litro Online, Flash Fiction Magazine, Red Fez, True Humor, and Deep South Magazine, among others. She was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center, where she studied with Barry Hannah. These days, she’s hard at work on a novel and another themed short story collection, both of which she started in grad school.
She co-wrote/directed a piece in Joey Soloway’s (Transparent) underground comedy venue, Sit ‘N Spin at the HBO Workspace in Los Angeles. Melanie Hutsell (SNL, Bridesmaids, Transparent), and Mitchell worked together to create it and Hutsell performed the piece. Sarah Silverman was on the show that night.
A screenplay, Stoney, Hero of Tamarack Lodge, one that she co-wrote with Sara Lundell Wahl, was accepted by the Festival for Drama, Film & Writing. It placed in the Quarterfinals of the 2024 ScreenCraft Family Screenplay Competition, InkTip Pro Screenwriting Contest, and the Quarterfinals of the Emerging Screenwriting Family and Holiday Contest.
Her screenplay Everything But Love was a Quarterfinalist in the ScreenCraft Comedy Competition in Los Angeles. It was a Semifinalist (Comedy Category) in the Screenplay Festival in Los Angeles, as well as an Official Selection in the Beverly Hills Film Festival. Lizzie Skurnick, New York Times editor of That Should Be a Word, has featured two words she coined on her Twitter/ page. See one of them here.
She was one of seven writers selected to perform and read her true story during Oral Fixation at the Wyly Theater in the Arts District in downtown Dallas. Oral Fixation is akin to The Moth. www.oralfixationshow.com.
She co-directed/produced a documentary film, His Name is Bob that screened in nine festivals across the U.S. Everywhere from Mammoth in Cali to Red Rocks in Utah to Hoboken in the Garden State. The film aired on The Documentary Channel for a year and can be streamed on Amazon Prime, Apple TV IMDB, Google Play, Vimeo, YouTube Movie Rentals and Tubi TV. Bob and the film were featured twice in The Dallas Morning News. It was also voted by the Dallas Observer as one of the Top 10 Music Documentaries in Dallas.
She has written numerous plays. One of them received a staged reading at the Tamarind Theater in Los Angeles. She also made the Top 3 in the 1-Minute Monologue Contest in Clay Banks Studio in LA, where excerpts from her plays are used in technique and scene study classes.
Contact her at lisa.johnson7@gmail.com. See her IMDB Director page here. Follow her on Twitter here.