About

LIZ ASCH Greenhill

IS AN ARTIST, writer, and acupuncturist, investigating creative expression, lyricism, and embodiment. 

Liz Asch teaches creative embodiment practices and methods of presence as a consultant, assistant, writer, collaborator, and acupuncturist. Working with the premise that the body is a renewable resource for the life of the mind, Liz is dedicated to discovering ways in which we can live more comfortably in our bodies and in the world.

Liz holds a BA from Vassar, an MFA from Eastern Oregon University and a Masters in Acupuncture and herbal medicine.

She is the host and creator of BODY LAND METAPHOR MEDICINE a dreamy archive of guided visualizations informed by surrealist art, pre-modern medicine, and somatic methods of embodiment, which help listeners center, self-regulate, and cultivate qi (which gives the sensation of acupuncture without the needles). It is free on Apple podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, Vurbl, and Stitcher.)

Liz was born in North Carolina in 1976. She studied realism with oils at a young age and fell in love with modern art. At Vassar College, she created stop-motion 16 mm films, studied literature, and wrote analytically about contemporary art and conceptual poetry. She apprenticed the bookbinder Claudia Cohen, learned printmaking from Bill Kelly and Michele Burgess of Brighton Press, and worked for Grenfell Press in New York City. Liz was a studio assistant to Barry Moser, Roberta Smith, Carroll Dunham, Joan Grubin, and the late Frank Moore. In Portland, Oregon, she works as an acupuncturist under the name Liz Greenhill, and provides creative support for artists and thinkers as a consultant.

Liz is informed by her life experience growing up in the South as a Jewish girl in the shadow of the Holocaust, and coming of age queer during the AIDS crisis. She has long been an activist for human rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, environmentalism, antiracism, and social justice. Liz lives with her teenage son, and her partner, Megan, and her three children.

Liz is the author of Your Salt on My Lips: (Mostly) Queer Literary Erotica (Cleis Press 2021), a celebration of eros across the spectrum of sexuality, with an emphasis on radical communication of desire and consent, and the healing powers of self permission.

A 2018 Pushcart nominee, Liz is the recipient of the 2017 Willamette Writer's Kay Snow Award for First Place in Nonfiction (judged by Elizabeth Lyons), the winner of the 2017 Phoebe Creative Nonfiction Contest (judged by Elena Passarello), and she received honorable mention from the 2018 Pigeon Pages Essay Contest, judged by Garrard Conley, the 2016 Montana Book Festival’s Regional Emerging Writers Contest and the 2016 Calyx’s Margarita Donnelly Prize. Liz is the grateful recipient of a 2022 RACC grant and is a part of the 2022-2023 Art/Lab cohort of Jewish Portland artists.

Her publications include The Rumpus, BUST Magazine, Sinister Wisdom, Brain Mill Press, Phoebe, MUTHA Magazine, Nailed Magazine, The Collagist, theEEEL, Atticus Review, Entropy, Perceptions, Oregon East, Gertrude Press, Four and Twenty, The North Coast Squid, The Manifest Station, the poetry anthology Step Lightly, The Dream Closet (a collection of writing on childhood spaces from Secretary Press), and The Untold Gaze (a book of writing paired with the paintings of Stephen O'Donnell). Liz has exhibited in group art shows including Siren Nation and Reed Off the Clock. Her 16 mm animated short, "The Loveseat," showed in gay and lesbian film festivals across the US and in Canada from 1998-2000. At EOU, Liz got her MFA in Creative Nonfiction under the guidance of Lidia Yuknavitch and Justin Hocking.

Liz has read at a variety of literary events, including the Dangerous Writers at Burnt Tongue, the Foul Weather Writers, at Words We Love, Grief Writes, Songbook, and Portland at Heart. She has performed storytelling with The Mystery Box and at Tales of Uncertainty. She has taught classes in creativity and embodiment at Portland Underground Graduate School, Corporeal Writing, the NW Narrative Medicine Collaborative Community Practicum, and guest taught at MFA programs.

She is seeking publication for two complete manuscripts: a literary portfolio on visual art that explores methods of making as metaphors for self acceptance, and a memoir on personal ghosts and how they can haunt and heal us. A third book, Metaphor Medicine, based on her podcast is in the works.