Liesl Schwabe is a writer, educator, and two-time Fulbright-Nehru Scholar to Kolkata, India. She has also served as a Scholar Associate at the Institute of Language Studies and Research Kolkata, where she continues to host writing workshops for PhD students, research scholars, and early-career academics and writers every summer.

 

Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, The Common, Off Assignment, The American Literary Review, The Mekong Review, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2026 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant for creative individuals and a 2027 residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Liesl has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was awarded the 2020 Donald Murray Prize. Liesl holds an MFA in Nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she has also served as an Alumni Fellow.

 

As an educator, Liesl teaches with the conviction that the writing process helps to foster imagination, self-reflection, and the willingness to engage with different points of view. An advocate of the liberal arts and critical inquiry, Liesl looks to nourish global citizenship and cross-cultural dialogue in her classrooms in the U.S. and in India. She is also especially invested in supporting undergraduates during their transition to college, while working to help them strengthen their voices, on and off the page.

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Previously the Director of the Writing Program at Yeshiva College, in New York City and an English Language Specialist with the Department of State, Liesl currently serves as Assistant Professor of English at Berkshire Community College. Originally from Akron, Ohio, Liesl lives in Western Massachusetts with her family and divides her time between the Berkshires, Brooklyn, and West Bengal.

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