Urvashi Vaid was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer. An expert in gender and sexuality law, she was a consultant in attaining specific goals of social justice. She held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force, serving as executive director from 1989-1992 — the first woman of color to lead a national gay-and-lesbian organization. She is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012).
Rita Mae Brown is an American feminist writer, best known for her coming-of-age autobiographical novel, Rubyfruit Jungle. Brown was active in a number of civil rights campaigns and criticized the marginalization of lesbians within feminist groups. Brown received the Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2015.
Dorothy Allison is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Julie Anne Peters was an American author of young adult fiction. Peters published 20 works, mostly novels, geared toward children and adolescents, many of which feature LGBT characters. In addition to the United States, Peters's books have been published in numerous countries, including South Korea, China, Croatia, Germany, France, Italy, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil. Her 2004 book Luna was the first young-adult novel with a transgender character to be released by a mainstream publisher.
Lesléa Newman is an American author, editor, and feminist best known for the children's book Heather Has Two Mommies. Four of her young adult novels have been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, making her one of the most celebrated authors in the category.
Triinu Kivilaan is an Estonian vocalist and former model, best known as a former member of the popular girl group Vanilla Ninja. She had been modelling for several years when she replaced Maarja Kivi on bass in the group in 2004, having met the other members of the group a year earlier. A key factor, allegedly, in her being selected to join the group was the similarities between her and Kivi's appearance. Kivilaan was the youngest member of the group, and continued with her education despite Vanilla Ninja's busy schedule.
O Street is a 2007 short story collection written by Corrina Wycoff. Called a "novel-in-stories" by OV Books, it explores the troubled life of young professional Beth Dinard from the perspective of the character herself as well as others around her. O Street was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction in 2007.
Joan Nestle is a Lambda Award winning writer and editor and a founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which holds, among other things, everything she has ever written. She is openly lesbian and sees her work of archiving history as critical to her identity as "a woman, as a lesbian, and as a Jew."
Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill were a lesbian couple, murdered in Medford, Oregon, by Robert Acremant.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before is a 2014 young adult romance novel by American author Jenny Han, first published by Simon & Schuster and released on April 15, 2014. Han was inspired to write the book based on her own habit of writing love letters to boys she had crushes on as a teenager. The novel was followed by two sequels, P.S. I Still Love You, released on May 26, 2015, and Always and Forever, Lara Jean, released on May 2, 2017.
Jennifer Lauck is an American fiction and non-fiction author, essayist, speaker and writing instructor.
Jeanne Córdova was an American writer and supporter of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. A former Catholic nun, Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and self-described butch.
Wonder is a contemporary children's novel written by R. J. Palacio and published on 14 February 2012. Wonder is in part inspired by an incident where the author's son started to cry after noticing a girl with a severe facial deformity. Inspiration was also pulled from Natalie Merchant's song of the same name. Several spin-offs have been published, including 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne's Book of Precepts, We're All Wonders, Auggie and Me, and White Bird. A film adaptation was released in 2017, and a spin-off sequel film followed in 2024.
Leonore Carol "Lee" Israel was an American author known for committing literary forgery. Her 2008 confessional autobiography Can You Ever Forgive Me? was adapted into the 2018 film of the same name starring Melissa McCarthy as Israel.
Melissa, previously published as George until April 2022, is a children's novel about a young transgender girl written by American author Alex Gino. The novel tells the story of Melissa, a fourth-grade girl who is struggling to be herself to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees Melissa as George, a boy. Melissa uses the class play, Charlotte's Web, to show her mom that she is a girl by switching roles with her best friend, and playing the part of Charlotte. Scholastic first published the novel on August 25, 2015, and it has had a mixed reaction because of its LGBT+ content. In 2021, Gino retitled the novel Melissa.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a 2018 American biographical drama film directed by Marielle Heller, with a screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty based on the 2008 confessional memoir of the same name by Lee Israel. Melissa McCarthy stars as Israel, and the story follows her attempts to revitalize her failing writing career by forging letters from deceased authors and playwrights. The film also features Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Jane Curtin, Anna Deavere Smith, Stephen Spinella, and Ben Falcone in supporting roles. Israel took the title from an apologetic line in a letter in which she posed as Dorothy Parker.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before is a 2018 American teen romantic comedy film directed by Susan Johnson and written by Sofia Alvarez. The film stars Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Janel Parrish, Anna Cathcart, Madeleine Arthur, Emilija Baranac, Israel Broussard and John Corbett. The movie is based on Jenny Han's 2014 novel of the same name, and was released by Netflix on August 17, 2018. It received generally favorable reviews from critics, who praised the cast.
The Last Thing He Told Me is a mystery-thriller novel written by Laura Dave, published May 4, 2021 by Simon & Schuster. The book became an instant #1 New York Times Bestseller and spent 82 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list.
"Pretty Whittle Liar" is the sixteenth episode of the thirty-third season of the American animated television series The Simpsons, and the 722nd episode overall. It aired in the United States on Fox on March 27, 2022. The episode was directed by Mike Frank Polcino and written by Joel H. Cohen. The episode title is a reference to the American teen drama TV series Pretty Little Liars.
