Lisa Jane Persky

Early life and education

Persky was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Jane Holley (née Wilson) and Mort Persky, and, subsequent to her parents' divorce, the step-daughter of novelist Judith Rossner (Looking for Mr. Goodbar) and classical violinist Vladimir Weisman. She grew up in New York's Greenwich Village, making her home at 87 Christopher Street, a building known for such notable tenants as playwright H.M. Koutoukas and Yoko Ono. Persky attended P.S. 41 elementary school and the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, where she studied graphic design.

Acting

Immediately after she graduated from high school, Persky's neighbor H.M. Koutoukas told her that he had written a play for her, and cast her (at the sum of $25 per week) as "Cordelia Wells, The World's Most Perfect Teenager" in the play Grandmother Is in the Strawberry Patch at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the first of several collaborations between the two. In 1976, she performed (as Mary-Eleanor) in Tom Eyen's Women Behind Bars, directed by Ron Link and starring Divine. Since that time, she has appeared in a wide variety of plays, including Broadway's Steaming, and has won critical acclaim in Los Angeles for many stage performances, as well as the Drama-Logue and LA Weekly awards for best actress for These Men, in which she starred at LAATC (Los Angeles Actors Theatre Company), and for Hearts on Fire at the Odyssey. She also received a Drama Critics Circle Award nomination (for Outstanding Performance) for her role in playwright Mayo Simon's These Men.

Her breakout performance as a film actress came in 1979, playing the role of Robert Duvall's daughter in The Great Santini, and she has gone on to act in more than two dozen films, including American Pop, The Big Easy, When Harry Met Sally..., Coneheads, The Cotton Club, and Peggy Sue Got Married. While playing Katrina in 1995's Destiny Turns on the Radio, she gave actor/director Quentin Tarantino his first on-screen kiss. In 2013, she appeared as herself in I Am Divine, Jeffrey Schwarz's documentary about the late actor Divine.

In television, Persky's work has included a recurring role on Private Eye, as well as appearances on the likes of NYPD Blue, The X-Files, King of the Hill, E/R, The Golden Girls, and dozens more. She has also appeared in such made-for-TV movies as Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back and KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.

Writing and editing

An early participant in the CBGB music scene, she was a founding member of the New York Rocker magazine staff. During that era, she documented the burgeoning punk/new wave movement both as a writer and a photojournalist. She revisited that scene on the New York Rockers panel at the 2012 EMP Pop Conference.

As a journalist, her work has also appeared in a variety of publications, including Fortean Times and the LA Weekly.

In 2010, she became a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she was also Art Director, leaving the publication in December 2012.

Her fiction has appeared, among other places, in the magazine BOMB and Eclectica (where, billed as Eljay Persky, she was one of 30 writers selected to be anthologized in their Eclectica: Best Fiction Vol. 1 collection).

Art

In addition to fine art photography, her work as a photographer has been featured in periodicals such as Mojo, Q, and Uncut, and also in books, including Gary Valentine's memoir, New York Rocker: My Life in The Blank Generation, Punk: The Whole Story, and Lance Out Loud, to which she also contributed an essay. Her collage work has appeared in publications including the Los Angeles Times and LA Style, and it earned her an Award for Design Excellence from Print magazine. In 2008, she co-produced and curated Los Angeles Loteria; An Exploration of Identity, an edition of prints in honor of the 40th anniversary of Aardvark Letterpress. In 2012, she contributed the foreword to the exhibit catalogue for photographer Bobby Grossman's show Low Fidelity - The Photos of Bobby Grossman.

Personal life

On January 19, 2008, she married music historian and former co-star of the Comedy Central game show Beat the Geeks, Andy Zax.

Miscellaneous

Persky was the subject of a critically lauded song by Blondie, "(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear", which was written by her then-boyfriend, Gary Valentine, who was the band's bassist at the time.

In 2009, Persky began making appearances on The Best Show on WFMU radio program, as both as a regular caller and as an in-studio special guest. She is also a semi-regular on the Life Elsewhere program on WMNF FM, Tampa.

Persky occasionally has appeared at fan conventions, including the 20th anniversary celebration for Quantum Leap and at the 2013 NY/NJ KISS Expo.