Lenore Montanaro

Montanaro was born on May 30, 1990, in Rhode Island, United States. She was diagnosed in September 1995, with Rhabdomyosarcoma at the age of five and subsequently battled the disease until the loss of her right leg above-the-knee on May 10, 2002.[1] She wears a prosthetic leg and is the first leg amputee to attend and graduate from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.[2][3]

She received her Juris Doctor from Western New England University. While in law school, Montanaro was one of two recipients of a national scholarship competition sponsored by the Defense Research Institute (DRI). Her winning essay contained her detailed opinion of the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.[4] On April 26, 2011, Montanaro's younger brother, John F. Montanaro III., died from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.[5]

Montanaro is licensed to practice law in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.[6][7] She was the second Director of Advocacy for the Animal Rescue League of Boston, one of the oldest animal welfare organizations in the United States.[8] She also worked as Legal Counsel for the State of Rhode Island. [9] She teaches animal law at the Roger Williams University School of Law.[10]

Montanaro served as chair of the American Bar Association Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section Animal Law Committee and the Rhode Island Bar Association Animal Law Committee. She is also a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, an honor bestowed to only 1% of attorneys in the United States. [11]

Montanaro began writing after the loss of her leg. Her literary influences include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Bishop, Cheryl Strayed, Robert K. Cording, Glennon Doyle, John Steinbeck, and Rainer Maria Rilke. She published a chapbook of poetry, The Morning within the Dark.[12] Her poetry deals with topics such as loss, meaning, and nature.[13]

Montanaro often writes about suffering and loss. Many of her poems detail one's experience with cancer and dying as viewed in an excerpt to her poem, titled, Sunglasses:[12]^: 29

Perhaps, death is the taking off of the sunglasses,
the awareness of no longer needing
to be protected from the suffering existence
that is so visible to us here.

Her poem, "This Camp," is in the anthology The Cancer Poetry Project 2 that was released in 2013.[14]