Alicia Cahalane Lewis
Biography
Raised in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia by a closet physicist father and an eighth generation Valley Quaker mother, Alicia Cahalane Lewis is an inquisitive novelist and poet. In 2013, she graduated from Naropa University with an MFA in Creative Writing.
Her full length prose poem nebulous beginnings and strings, a meditation on time and spirituality, featuring the work of Shenandoah Valley painter Winslow McCagg was published in August 2017 (Tattered Press). Alicia’s chapbook of poetic essays entitled Birds Fly But a Long Time Ago They Swam, a meditation on evolution, was published by The Lune Chapbook Series Spring 2017. Her meditative memoir, The Intrepid Meditator, a Reiki-inspired guide for attaining balance and clear inner knowing, was published by Tattered Script Publishing, September, 2021.
Her novella Room Service Please, winner of both a gold for overall cover design and a silver for cover design (photography) with The Book Fest, tells the story of Edie May, an early Flapper mistaken for a famous Hollywood starlet, in this 1922 Cinderella story (Tattered Script Publishing, April 2022). Kirkus Reviews calls Alicia’s poetic prose novella, Restless, which takes place in Paris, 1903, and is a reimagining of My Fair Lady, “A brief but memorable tale with prose that sings.” (Tattered Script Publishing, April 2023). BlueInk Reviews has this to say about Alicia’s novella, The Faeries of Fable Island , a reimagining of the Peter Pan and Wendy tale: “Deep readers will find this novel unconventional, perceptive, and profoundly moving.” The Archivist (forthcoming December 2024), reimagines the goddess origin story of the first feline Egyptian sphinx. (Tattered Script Publishing).
Aware of her tie to the Valley that goes back nine generations, Alicia recently returned after a twenty five year hiatus in Maine where she raised two daughters. As witness to the stories of the early settlers’ perseverance and appreciation for the bounty and beauty of the Valley, it is a place where she continues to find inspiration for her creative work.