About Lisa

Lisa Collier Cool is a bestselling author and winner of 22 journalism awards. She was first published at age 9 in Ladies’ Home Journal (a letter to the editor) and has written more than 1.2 million words for America’s leading magazines, newspapers and websites. In the journalism community, she’s known as “the queen of queries,” due to her book HOW TO WRITE IRRESISTIBLE QUERY LETTERS, which is widely used in writing courses. She is a past president of American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and former chair of the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund, a charity that aids professional writers facing financial hardship due to illness, disability or an extraordinary professional crisis.

Lisa has written hundreds of articles for Associated Press, CBS MoneyWatch, Cosmopolitan, The Daily News, Essence, Family Circle, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Oprah Magazine, Parade, Parents, Penthouse, Prevention, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, SELF, USA Weekend, WebMD, Woman’s Day and many others. For several years, she wrote the popular Day in Health blog for Yahoo! Health, where she was a featured “health expert,” receiving millions of page views.

Lisa’s article, “The Preventable Cancer,” published in Good Housekeeping, won the National Magazine Award for Consumer Service and was featured at a White House press conference with Katie Couric and then First Lady Hillary Clinton, who thought so highly of the article that she presented Lisa with an autographed copy. Lisa is also four-time winner of ASJA’s June Roth Memorial Medical Journalism Article Award.

Lisa’s other honors include a 2023 Nautilus Gold Book Award in the Health and Wellness category for her book, HEALTHY HEART, HEALTHY BRAIN, which she coauthored with Drs. Bradley Bale and Amy Doneen. This award celebrates “Better Books for a Better World,” with past winners including Deepak Chopra, King Charles, Desmond Tutu, Malala Yousafzai, and the Dalai Lama. The book also won ASJA’s 2023 June Roth Memorial Medical Journalism Book Award. Lisa has also won three National Health Information Awards, the Henry R. Luce Award, and three ASJA Outstanding Article Awards.

Lisa is the author of seven books, including BEWARE THE NIGHT: A New York City Cop Investigates the Supernatural (with coauthor Ralph Sarchie), which was published by St. Martin’s Press and reached #3 on the Amazon bestseller list. Sony Screen Gems has released a major motion picture with an all-star cast based on the book, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and titled, “DELIVER US FROM EVIL.” A movie edition of the book with that title was published by St. Martin’s Press.. As part of Lisa’s research, she attended an exorcism.

Her other books include BAD BOYS: Why We Love Them, How To Live With Them, When To Leave Them (with Carole Lieberman, MD), HOW TO GIVE GOOD PHONE, HOW TO SELL EVERY MAGAZINE ARTICLE YOU WRITE, and BEAT THE HEART ATTACK GENE, with coauthors Bradley Bale, MD and Amy Doneen, DNP (2014, John Wiley & Sons).

Her media appearances include more than 200 radio talk shows and A Current Affair, ABC News, AM Philadelphia, Cleveland Exchange, the Early Show, Good Housekeeping Reports, Good Morning America, Hard Copy, and Reader’s Digest podcasts. Before becoming a freelance writer, Lisa was a literary agent, selling more than 400 books, many of them bestsellers. Lisa is married, with three daughters and two bad behaved Border terriers.