When she’s not getting paid to travel the world, Lise Funderburg spends her time at home in Mt. Airy cooking, gardening, and of course, writing.

When I first met her earlier this summer, I was her student at a writing workshop in Paris. We bonded over the details of her recent a trip to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand—the very same one I’ve been dying to go to for the past three years—and soon found that, in addition to elephant love, we had much more in common, including Philadelphia area roots, an obsession with food (both the Philly restaurant scene and localvorism), and summer homes in the same beach town.

Talk about a small world. 

Funderburg grew up in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Powelton Village, one of three daughters in a biracial family. After going away to college, Funderburg began her writing career in New York and didn’t return to the area for twenty years. As a former New Yorker, she jokes that moving back home was moving to what the New York Times calls the “sixth borough.”

"There is a lot of cross-pollination between residents of (her) older neighborhood in Powelton and those who live here,” she said.

Each of Funderburg's sisters lives within 10 minutes of her, and every now and then, while doing a project around the house (a Victorian era “twin”), she says she and her husband will uncover deep purple walls, a throwback to the time when one of her sister’s former bosses owned the home as a commune. 

As a freelance journalist, Funderburg focuses primarily on community and identity topics, everything from race and social issues to food and gardening. She herself has a huge garden, which has placed second in the citywide competition, and for the past 13 summers, she has held an annual driveway plant sale and block party.

“Some people come back every year and report on how their plants are, bring me some of their plants, my sisters bake things … it’s really great,” she said.  

She is well-known for her book, Black, White, Other, in which she explored perspectives on biracial identities. 

Her latest book, Pig Candy (2008), is part social history/part memoir and chronicles a daughter’s discoveries while taking her dying father, a native of segregated rural Georgia, on a last visit his childhood home. Funderburg's father, who died in 2006, was known in West Philadelphia as a realtor.

“One consequence of writing about him and living here,” said Funderburg, “is that I get a lot of responses from people who knew him who say, ‘yes you got it spot on,’ ‘oh I wondered about that,’ or, ‘that’s not like him at all.'

“Once you’re an author and your book goes out into the world, it’s not yours anymore. Readers own it. Literally and figuratively.” 

But for all of her world traveling, Funderburg is most happy at home near her family in Mt. Airy. 

Her house is just as I would expect it to be, with Victorian-era detailing and wood floors, soft-toned pillows and elegant yet comfortable accents. She introduced me to her husband, John, and stepson who sat at the dining room table poring over some serious-looking papers (perhaps plans for their latest project—coffee roasting). Here, too, was a galley copy of Funderburg’s elephant story that will be featured in the October issue of MORE magazine. In the kitchen, her soon to be stepdaughter-in-law stood in front of a range with a restaurant-grade iron hood and waved a flour-spattered hand. These people are serious about their cooking.  

Artfully arranged wall photos compliment the homey clutter of the place, and their subjects are a testament to the importance of family in this household.  

Upstairs, we passed bedrooms and entered the “sanctum inner sanctum”—her study. It is an open, airy, and comforting space; a large Oriental rug adds warmth to the room. Sitting at her desk by the window, she can look out to the street below. She also has a board in the room filled with various trinkets that trigger memories from her past.

A few moments later, sitting on her porch with the summer rain falling steadily behind us, Funderburg's disposition made me feel at home, like I, too, am a part of this community.

“In graduate school I realized that writers are real people, and that I could be a real person, and a writer,” she told me.

I am jealous of her niece, whom she dotes on; Funderburg is definitely the aunt that everyone wants to have, the kind with whom you can sit and drink tea on a rainy day and the kind who can sense who you are in your soul.

To read more on Lise Funderburg and her writing, look for her online here.