Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro was born in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Her family was from a slave rebel area named Santurce and Rio Grande, and her ancestors are from Africa. She speaks both English and Spanish and a little bit of Italian and Portuguese. She began writing since before she can remember and won a literary contest in 3rd grade. In 1989, she won the intra-university competition of the Bayamón Central University with the story "Vimbi Botella." In 1990, she directed a play entitled ¿A dónde va el amor? (Where Does Love Go?) which was based on her own script, which was staged in Barrio Amelia, a poor neighborhood in Guaynabo where the author was raised. Ms. Pizarro is currently working on her thesis for her Masters in Creative Writing. She was recently awarded an Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña Literary Prize (2011) and also won the National Institute of Puerto Rican Literature Prize in 2008, the Woman Latino Writer Award Residency from National Hispanic Culture Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2011 and the PEN Club Prize in 2010 and 2006. She is the author of Caparazones (2010), the first lesbian fiction novel written in Puerto Rico, published by Editorial Egales in Spain. Her favorite subjects to write about are inequity, femininity, lesbianism, love and race. The common themes of her works are the female body, life on the margins, and the ones with no voice. She says that she writes to fight for others, and wants readers to know that any ordinary person can be a hero as long as they help others. Yolanda directed the Anthology Cachaperismos, the first Puerto Rican lesbian anthology in the island published in 2010 and participates in Seasons African Edition, a Periodic Journal of the International Centre for Women Playwrights in South Africa and Pirene's Fountain Japan Anthology 2011. Her final message that she loves to give readers is that “there is hope if you fight for it!” She teaches creative writing workshops in San Juan. She currently resides in Carolina, Puerto Rico with her daughter who is 15 years old and her wife, Zulma.