Lyz Lenz
Lyz Lenz is a writer and editor. Born in 1982, she is a columnist at The Cedar Rapids Gazette and previously served as managing editor of The Rumpus. Her writing has been published by various publications including the Columbia Journalism Review and The Gazette, and she wrote a book titled God Land that explores her personal experiences and the role of religion and politics in rural America during the Trump era.
Lenz moved from Vermillion, South Dakota to Minneapolis while in high school and graduated from Eden Prairie High School. She has an undergraduate degree from Gustavus Adolphus College. A divorced mother, she wrote in Glamour about her self-imposed 2-year hiatus from cooking. She has belonged to evangelical churches but came into conflict with their orthodoxies including on the role of women in church and exclusion of gay and lesbian people.
In September 2019 she was a moderator for an LGBTQ discussion with U.S. presidential candidates Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
