Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is the author of L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (SUNY Press 2013), and SCHISTSONG (Bordighera Press 2013). She is also a songwriter and vocalist. Lanzillotto was born and raised in the Westchester Square neighborhood of the Bronx, and in Yonkers, New York, of Barese heritage. She received a B.A. with honors in medical anthropology from Brown University and an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poem "Triple Bypass" won the Italian American Writers Association Paolucci Award in Poetry, and was published in the 2002 anthology, The Milk