Lilly Dancyger (born 1988) is an American author and editor. She is the author of the memoirs Negative Space and First Love: Essays on Friendship, as well as editor of the anthology Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger. Her essays have been published by Literary Hub, The New York Times, Elle, Slate, and Brevity, among other outlets. She writes the newsletter The Word Cave.
Dancyger was the Memoir Editor at Narratively from 2014-2020, during which time she also worked as a freelance journalist, writing for outlets such as Rolling Stone, Glamour, The Cut, and others.
Her 2021 memoir, Negative Space, details her investigation into her father's life, who had an addiction to heroin and died prematurely, through the art he created. Gabino Iglesias from NPR and Claire Rudy Foster from The Rumpus both praised the work's nonlinear narrative and exploration of grief. Negative Space was selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards. In 2021, Dancyger was named a "Writer to Watch" by BookPage.
