Sila Long

Lisa Paisley-Cleveland writes under her own name and the pen name Sila Long. Her work spans historical fiction, political thrillers, suspense, and romance, drawing on a career in mental health leadership, higher education, and research to create stories rich in emotional depth, psychological insight, and historical authenticity.

Her fiction explores themes of identity, accountability, grief, resilience, redemption, and the enduring consequences of the choices people make. Whether chronicling the generational impact of a family secret in the unpublished historical novel VEIL, examining the intersection of patriotism, institutional trust, and emerging technology in the political thriller Inside the House, or exploring love and loss in the Even Through the Fire series, her novels are grounded in compelling characters facing extraordinary moral choices.

Lisa holds a Ph.D. in Social Welfare, previously served as an adjunct professor, and spent more than three decades in mental health leadership. Her Jamaican heritage and New York upbringing continue to shape the cultural and historical perspectives reflected throughout her writing. Her nonfiction book, Black Middle-Class Women and Pregnancy Loss, and her fiction novel I Touched the Moon: A Tale of Abduction and Redemption reflect her longstanding commitment to giving voice to stories that deserve to be told.

Whether writing under her own name or as Sila Long, Lisa Paisley-Cleveland writes about ordinary and extraordinary people confronting the moral consequences of powerful systems—families, governments, institutions, or history—and the choices that ultimately define them.