Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro is a Puerto Rican writer. She has published several books that denounce and set forth passionate approaches, fostering a debate on Afro- identity and sexual diversity. She directs the Department of Afro-Puerto Rican Studies, a creative writing performance project hosted by the Casa Museo Ashford. Yolanda also founded the Black Ancestral Women Lectureship in response to the call issued by UNESCO to celebrate the International Decade for People of African Descent. Arroyo-Pizarro was invited by the United Nations Remembering Slavery program to address the intersection of women, slavery, and creativity in 2015.Her collection of short stories Las negras received the Puerto Rico PEN Club National Award in Short-Story Fiction and explores the limited historical paths of female characters who defy the hierarchies of power. Arroyo Pizarro also won the National Short-Story Prize awarded by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (2012 and 2015), and the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature National Prize in 2008. Caparazones, Lesbofilias, and Violeta are some of the novels where she explores transgression from an openly visible lesbianism. Yolanda's work has been translated into German, French, Italian, English, Portuguese, and Hungarian.
