Lily Burana is a punk rock girl turned writer and editor. Since starting her writing life as a columnist and editor at punk and alternative 'zines, she has gone on to write for The Washington Post, GQ, The New York Times, Self, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, The Village Voice, The New York Observer, and her reviews and cultural criticism have been picked up by magazines and newspapers around the world. She has been a Contributing Editor at SPIN and New York magazines. Her essays have been included in numerous anthologies, including Sex and Sensibility (Simon and Schuster, 2005) and The May Queen (Tarcher, 2006).
Lily married an active-duty Army officer in 2002. Her latest book, I LOVE A MAN IN UNIFORM: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles (Weinstein Books, 2009) was inspired by the overwhelming response she received to her writing about the domestic side of military affairs--a Slate Diary and a New York Times Op-Ed. Her first non-fiction book, STRIP CITY: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (Miramax Books, 2001) made Best of the Year lists in Entertainment Weekly, Salon, New York Newsday, and Rocky Mountain News, and was selected as a Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers title. Strip City was also named in the Top Six "EW Picks" in Entertainment Weekly's 2008 "So You Want to Write a Memoir" roundup, which featured a thousand recent memoirs. Her novel, TRY (St. Martins Press, 2006), an alt.Western romance, was hailed by Kirkus Reviews as "a touching winter-spring romance set amid full Western regalia."
Lily is the recipient of a writer's residency at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, where she wrote much of her novel. Along with Linnea Due and Roxxie, she co-edited the groundbreaking anthology Dagger: On Butch Women (Cleis Press, 1994).
As a speaker, Lily has given presentations at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, The Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, OutWrite, and she is a repeat presenter at the Columbia School of Journalism.
She lives in New York with her family.