[close] Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (born February 28, 1969 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an American novelist known for her literary works in the Chick-Lit and teen genres, including The Dirty Girls Social Club (2003), Playing with Boys (2004), Make Him Look Good, and Haters (both 2006). She is also a screenwriter, TV producer, and the editor of Latino Perspectives magazine in Phoenix, Arizona.

Her father, Nelson Valdés, is a Cuban-American sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, who emigrated from Cuba at age fifteen. Her mother, Maxine Conant, is an Irish-American poet and novelist from New Mexico. She has one brother, Ricardo Alberto Valdes.

Alisa is married, and has a son, Alexander.

She graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston, with a bachelor's degree in performance on the tenor saxophone. She later earned a master's from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where she graduated in 1994.

In 1994 she was hired as a reporter for the Boston Globe. In 1999 she began working for the Los Angeles Times covering the music industry. She has also worked for the Albuquerque Tribune as the newspaper's arts and entertainment editor. Her articles have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the nation, and she has written cover stories for "Glamour" and "Redbook" magazines.