Alisa Rivera was born and raised in the Bronx, where she wrote her first poem in the third grade. She attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning her B.A. in Communications. Despite it being obvious to her friends and family that she was a writer, she detoured into a career as a human resources officer for the Chase Manhattan Bank. Alisa eventually came to her senses and quit her job to attend Syracuse University, where she earned a master's in Journalism. Her articles have been published in the Oregonian newspaper and McCall's and Latina magazines, and her short stories have appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review, Iris: a journal about women, and the UCLA Beat. Alisa lives in Los Angeles, where she is a writer for City of Hope National Cancer Center and is completing her first novel.