Originally from Albany, New York, Alissa holds a B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is earning an M.A. in Humanities & Social Thought at New York University, concentrating in culture and media theory. She is an associate editor for Comment magazine, editor-in-chief of The Curator, and is on staff at International Arts Movement. She regularly contributes film reviews to Christianity Today and Paste.

After moving to New York City in 2005, Alissa joined the Village Church, a small, eclectic, offbeat PCA congregation in Greenwich Village. There she met and married Tom, a photographer and filmmaker. They live in Brooklyn with a large collection of books, plenty of moderately obscure movies, and stacks of back issues of the New Yorker. Alissa enjoys good things to eat and drink, postmodern novels, arthouse films, conversations with thinkers, theatre, Moleskine notebooks, and riding the subway over the Manhattan Bridge at night.

She considers coffee to be a prime evidence of the doctrine of common grace.