A high school dropout and a mother at 17, in her early years, Lily Iona MacKenzie supported herself as a stock girl in the Hudson’s Bay Company, as a long distance operator for the former Alberta Government Telephones, and as a secretary (Bechtel Corp sponsored her into the States). She also was a cocktail waitress at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, briefly broke into the male-dominated world of the docks as a longshoreman (she was the first woman to work on the SF docks and almost got her legs broken), founded and managed a homeless shelter in Marin County, and eventually earned two Master’s degrees (one in English with an emphasis on Creative writing and one in the Humanities). She has published reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, essays, and memoir in over 155 American and Canadian venues. FLING!, one of her novels, was published in July 2015. CURVA PELIGROSA, another novel, was published in September 2017. FREEFALL: A DIVINE COMEDY will be released in 2018. Her poetry collection ALL THIS was published in 2011. She also taught writing at the University of San Francisco for over 30 years and was vice-president of USF's part-time faculty union. She currently teaches creative writing at USF's Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning. When she isn't writing, she paints and travels widely with her husband.

Curva Peligrosa
Fling!
Freefall: A Divine Comedy
Tillie: Portraits of a Canadian Girl in Training

Women's Fiction Writing Association
AWP
Women Writers, Women's Books
WNBA
Story Circle Network