Lyall F. Harris is an award-winning artist, published creative and critical writer, and arts educator. She holds a BA in Art History from Northwestern University (Phi Beta Kappa) and an MFA in Book Art and Creative Writing from Mills College as the inaugural graduate in the nation’s first MFA of this kind.
Since the late 90s, Lyall's artwork has been exhibited in more than one hundred solo and juried group shows and recognized with over twenty awards, including The George Hitchcock Prize from the National Academy Museum, New York. Her book art can be found in many special collections across the United States, among these, Yale (Haas Arts Library), Stanford (Green Library), Indiana University (Lilly Library), and Smith College (Mortimer Rare Book Room). Lyall has been the recipient of fellowships at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, NALL Foundation in Vence, France, and The Grabhorn Institute. Her artwork has additionally been featured in literary magazines, including La Petite Zine and Generations.
Lyall's poetry has appeared in The New Guard, The Prose Poem Project, Pure Francis, San Francisco Bay Guardian, among other publications, and her creative nonfiction has been featured in The Montréal Review. She was awarded the Honorable Mention for the Mary Merritt Henry Prize in Poetry and also received an Honorable Mention from New Millennium Writings (poetry). Her writing has been a finalist for The Bunchgrass Poetry Prize, The Briar Cliff Review Poetry Contest, and the Glimmer Train Press Very Short Fiction Award.
Lyall lives and works in Florence, Italy, and San Francisco.