Liza Lentini is an award-winning writer and editor.
After receiving her MFA in Playwriting in the late ‘90s, Liza moved to NYC and launched her freelance editing and writing career, and specialized in book editing and author coaching. She taught playwriting, screenwriting and story structure in her own workshop in Midtown Manhattan for eight years.
After numerous awards, residencies and dozens of productions throughout the U.S. and Europe, Liza retired from playwriting in 2009 with a multi-week festival of her early work by 42nd Street’s Manhattan Repertory Theatre, where she was also Playwright in Residence. Having written over 100 plays since her first professional production at the age of 19, her work is still being produced around the country to this day.
From 2006 — 2010, Liza founded and managed a children’s theater company that specialized in educational and uplifting plays for kids in hospitals. The company was in residence for two years at Bellevue Pediatric Hospital and toured all the major hospitals throughout New York City, receiving much publicity and acclaim.
In 2017 Liza became a founding editor of the luxury travel site WONDERLUST. There she handled many critical elements of building the brand as well as the editorial department — from affiliate initiatives to hiring writers — eventually becoming the Style Editor, until being officially “at large” in 2020.
After joining SPIN in August of 2020 as Features Editor, Liza currently serves as Executive Editor where her interviews include Robert Plant, Sinead O’Connor, Tori Amos, John Mellencamp and Indigo Girls (Long Reads, April 2021). She also conceived and currently writes many of SPIN’s ongoing franchises, including its most-successful series “5 Albums I Can’t Live Without.”
Throughout the decades, she’s appeared on TV, radio and podcasts to promote her projects and her writing. Her national television appearances include the popular Oxygen Network series “Snapped,” where she offered journalistic insight into true crime cases. In 2021 she launched a SPIN InstaLive interview series.
Her freelance writing has run the gamut from style to science. Written in 2007, her Discover magazine article on Laundau-Kleffner syndrome—a then barely-discussed rare language disorder in children—is credited as opening the channels for worldwide communication.
Additionally, Liza has also worked with brands to monetize editorial via results-driven strategic content.
To learn more about Liza, read her personal “A Day in the Life” and “5 Albums I Can’t Live Without” features in SPIN.You can find Liza’s 2022 end-of-year editorial roundup here.
Check out her January 2022 interview with Music Journalism Insider below.
