Biography
Lillo Way's chapbook, “Dubious Moon,” won the Hudson Valley Writers Center’s Slapering Hol Chapbook Contest. Her poem “Offering,” is the winner of the E.E. Cummings Award for New England Poetry Club, a poets’ association founded in 1915 by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, and Conrad Aiken. Her poem “Appropriation,” winner of a Florida Review Editors’ Award for Poetry. She is numerous times a Pushcart Prize nominee and finalist. Her work has appeared in RHINO, Poet Lore, Tampa Review, New Letters, Louisville Review, New Orleans Review, Tar River Poetry, Madison Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Poetry East, The American Journal of Poetry, among others. Twelve of Way's poems are included in anthologies. Way has received grants from the National Endowment the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for her choreographic work involving poetry.
Way served on the faculty of the Dance Program of the School of Education at New York University for five years, one of which years, she was Assistant Professor and Artist-in-Residence. She taught at Hunter College for four years, and was a guest artist/instructor at Princeton University. She also taught at the University of Maryland and Barnard College, and presented lectures and workshops at other colleges and universities throughout the country.
She performed in the dance companies of Erick Hawkins and Twyla Tharp, and was artistic director/choreographer of the Lillo Way Dance Company.
As an actor, Lillo Way performed in classical and contemporary plays on New York stages and in regional theaters, and appeared in numerous national network television commercials. She was a regular reader on NPR’s “Selected Shorts”, recorded live at Symphony Space in New York City.
Way taught yoga for ten years at the Integral Yoga Institute in New York City, as well as special yoga programs in India and Mexico. She taught Yoga-for-Actors at the Michael Howard Studio and the New York Film Academy.