Iolanthe Woulff

Iolanthe "Lannie" Woulff came into the world as a male during the fifth year of the Truman presidency, which means that she is rapidly acquiring the status of an antique. In 1958 her family moved from Manhattan to the island of St. Thomas, which in those days was a sparsely-populated tropical dot in the Caribbean. There "Nate", as Lannie was known in those days, spent several idyllic years gleefully swinging from jungle vines and swimming on the world's most beautiful unspoiled beaches. She treasures many poignant memories of that lost paradise, which, alas, is no longer.

Moving back to the mainland in 1964, Lannie attended The Maret School in Washington, D.C. As the Vietnam War raged and protest movements convulsed the nation, she gained admission to Princeton, and after escaping the inaugural Selective Service lottery by a scant fourteen points, graduated in 1973 with a degree in English. For several ensuing years she lived in New York City and worked for her uncle, who was then developing an early prototype hybrid vehicle. That was during the Studio 54 era, the so-called "Me Decade", which Lannie experienced at full throttle while writing a coming-of-age novel which remained unpublished.

In 1980, at the urging of her younger brother, she moved to Israel, where together they opened a diving business on the Red Sea. When the Lebanon War wiped out the tourist trade and with it their business, she returned stateside to raise pedigreed Black Angus cows on a family farm in northern Virginia's famous Hunt Country. The rolling hills and pastoral beauty of that area provide the setting for SHE'S MY DAD.

Succumbing to the lure of the West in 1987, she finally settled for good in the California resort town of Palm Springs. Ten years later, fulfilling a lifelong imperative, Lannie commenced the complex and emotionally turbulent process of gender transition. During the process she authored a column called "The T Dance" in one of the local LGBT magazines, before turning her attention full-time to fiction writing.

Lannie is the proud parent of a beautiful and accomplished daughter,a new grandparent, loves to tease her generic tabby cat Xena, and enjoys spending time with her eminent father, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk.

SHE'S MY DAD is Lannie's debut effort. Believing that one must always retain a sense of humor, she is writing another novel.

5/30/2017 UPDATE: Forty-some years after she threw it in her trunk, Lannie has disinterred, rewritten and published her very first novel, a coming-of-age tale called STAINER. Set in 1970s New York, it is about a nice but naive Jewish college boy's struggles to navigate the risks and temptations of that freewheeling time known as the 'Me' Decade.