[1] Among her works are Osprey Island, The Good People of New York, and Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night.
Nissen is a graduate of Hunter College High School on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
After finishing a story collection called How Other People Make Love, Nissen is at work on a novel, and on several collaged picture books for children.
[3] From the fall of 2007 to the spring of 2009, she taught fiction workshops at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
In 2010, she began a tenure-line appointment in the English Department at Western Michigan University, where she joined Jaimy Gordon, William Olsen, Nancy Eimers, Steve Feffer, and Richard Katrovas in the Creative Writing Program.