Biography
Annie Lanzillotto is a memoirist, poet, performance-artist, singer-songwriter, and playwright, who illuminates history and folklore with an inimitable Bronx voice. Through creating and inhabiting characters such as a pushcart-peddler vocalizing cries in the streets of the Bronx, a cantastoria (sing the story: woman with a stick shouting stories) sitting atop the blue corner mailboxes she defines as “portals of urban story;” as “Icewoman” spinning a 200 pound block of ice in an homage to her iceman ancestors—Lanzillotto makes history come alive. She leads crowds in choral recitations such as her “Ballad for Joe Zito” at Unite’s 100th Triangle Fire Memorial. She is a founding Board Member of “Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition” for which she conceived of the “146 Shirtwaist Kites” to memorialize the fallen workers of 1911. Her books include: “Hard Candy: Caregiving, Mourning and Stagelight,” and “Pitch, Roll, Yaw” (Guernica), "L is for Lion: an italian bronx butch freedom memoir" (SUNY), Lambda Literary Award finalist, and "Schistsong," (Bordighera). One of “200 essential New Yorkers” (NY Times), for her performance installation at The Smithsonian Folk Life Festival. NYFA Fellowships in Non-Fiction Writing, and Multi-Disciplinary Performance. She was a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellow and her plays and performances have been commissioned by Dancing In the Streets, Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, Franklin Furnace, and Dixon Place. Member of Theatre 68.