A Canadian by birth, 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, co-created THE STORY SHOPPE, a weekly radio program for children that aired on KTIM in Marin, and eventually earned two Master’s degrees (one in Creative writing and one in the Humanities). She has published reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, essays, and memoir in over 150 American and Canadian venues. Fling!, one of her novels, was published in July 2015 by Pen-L Publishing. Curva Peligrosa, another novel, will be published in 2017. Freefall: A Divine Comedy will be released in 2018. Her poetry collection All This was published in 2011. She taught writing at the University of San Francisco for over 30 years and was vice-president of USF's part-time faculty union. When she isn't writing, she paints and travels widely with her husband. Visit her blog at: lilyionamackenzie.wordpress.com.