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Lisa is an award-winning screenwriter and playwright whose work engages dynamic social issues, often through a female lens. She’s known for creating multi-layered characters, exploring the complexity of human emotion, and finding levity in discomfort.
After visiting Vilnius, Lithuania, Lisa began exploring themes of Jewish resistance, resilience, memory, and legacy. Her TV pilot, FANIA IN THE FOREST, was a Top 5 ScreenCraft Fellowship Finalist and an Austin Film Festival Pitch Finalist. Most recently, the pilot was named to The 2026 Women’s List of top unproduced scripts.
Lisa also wrote and produced the award-winning short film TATTOO YOU, based on her published one-act play, which has screened at more than 15 film festivals nationally and internationally. Her critically acclaimed play HERE COMES THE NIGHT is currently being adapted as a screenplay.
A two-time Kennedy Center O’Neill Fellow, Lisa’s work has been developed and produced across the country. Originally from Boston and based in Los Angeles, she is a graduate of Wesleyan University.
Upcoming Reading of FANIA IN THE FOREST - October 8th at Holocaust Museum LA - would love for you to come if you can! Let me know and I can add you to the list. https://www.
Date: Thu, Oct 08
Location: The Goldrich Cultural Center
After the 1941 Nazi invasion of Vilna tears her family apart, a defiant 16-year-old Jewish girl fights to earn her place among a band of forest partisans—only to make a reckless mistake that puts the entire brigade at risk.
After the 1941 Nazi invasion of Vilna tears her family apart, a defiant 16-year-old Jewish girl fights to earn her place among a band of forest partisans—only to make a reckless mistake that puts the entire brigade at risk.
About the Staged Reading of Fania in the Forest
FANIA IN THE FOREST is a fierce coming-of-age television pilot about a rebellious 16-year-old Jewish girl who escapes the Vilna ghetto and fights to earn her place among the male-dominated forest partisans. As she confronts both the brutality of the Nazi occupation and the resistance’s rigid ideas about what a girl can be, Fania discovers the cost and the power of refusing to stay in her place.
A Top 5 ScreenCraft Fellowship finalist and Austin Film Festival Pitch finalist, FANIA IN THE FOREST was most recently named to the 2026 Women’s List, recognizing the year’s top unproduced screenplays by women.
The reading runs approximately 75 minutes with no intermission, followed by a Q&A. FANIA IN THE FOREST is written by Lisa Kenner Grissom and directed by Genevieve Fowler. The team includes Noam Dromi, Executive Producer for Reboot Studios and Lauren Schaffel, Co-Producer.
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