Mark Brennan Rosenberg is an openly gay [1] author and comedian based in New York City. He is the author of two books: Blackouts and Breakdowns - released on August 24, 2011, and Eating My Feelings: Tales of Overeating, Underperforming, and Coping with My Crazy Family - released on August 6, 2013 through Crown Publishing. [1] Rosenberg's writings and commentary focus on the issues that affect the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community; particularly alcohol addiction and substance abuse, which he discusses heavily in his first book. [2] Rosenberg has been sober since 2008. He is currently a contributor for The Huffington Post . [3] Rosenberg toured the country promoting his first book Blackouts and Breakdowns in 2012, [4] and again promoting his second book, Eating My Feelings, in late 2013. [5] Rosenberg's first novel This Made Me Think of You was released on April 5, 2016. It follows a couple's breakup over the course of a year solely through their social media, text and email exchanges. [6]
Melissa Lou Etheridge is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and activist. Her self-titled debut album Melissa Etheridge was released in 1988 and became an underground success. The album peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard 200, and its lead single, "Bring Me Some Water", garnered Etheridge her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female. In 1993, Etheridge won her first Grammy award for her single "Ain't It Heavy" from her third album, Never Enough. Later that year, she released what would become her mainstream breakthrough album, Yes I Am. Its tracks "I'm the Only One" and "Come to My Window" both reached the top 30 in the United States, and the latter earned Etheridge her second Grammy award. Yes I Am peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard 200, and spent 138 weeks on the chart, earning an RIAA certification of 6× Platinum, her largest selling album to date.
Katherine Vandam Bornstein is an American author, playwright, performance artist, actor, and gender theorist. In 1986, Bornstein identified as gender non-conforming and has stated "I don't call myself a woman, and I know I'm not a man" after having been assigned male at birth and receiving sex reassignment surgery. Bornstein now identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them and she/her. Bornstein has also written about having anorexia, being a survivor of PTSD and being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Jonathan Safran Foer is an American novelist. He is known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002), Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), Here I Am (2016), and for his non-fiction works Eating Animals (2009) and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019). He teaches creative writing at New York University.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a novel by Jeanette Winterson published in 1985 by Pandora Press. It is a coming-of-age story about a lesbian girl who grows up in an English Pentecostal community. Key themes of the book include transition from youth to adulthood, complex family relationships, same-sex relationships, organised religion and the concept of faith.
Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at College of Staten Island (CSI) and a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award.
City of Night is a novel written by John Rechy. It was originally published in 1963 in New York by Grove Press. Earlier excerpts had appeared in Evergreen Review, Big Table, Nugget, and The London Magazine.
Wendilyn Marielle Caitlin Brennan, better known by her stage name Cait Brennan, is an American singer, songwriter, actress and screenwriter. Brennan's musical style contains elements of glam rock, psychedelic soul, R&B, Indie pop and power pop, combined with dense vocal harmonies and revealing literate lyrics that occasionally draw on vaudeville, music hall, mythical and biblical themes. In 2016, Brennan released her first full-length studio album, Debutante, to significant acclaim, landing on numerous best-of-2016 lists including the Village Voice Pazz & Jop list. Her second studio album, Third, was recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis and was released via Omnivore Recordings on April 21, 2017.
Ann Weldy, better known by her pen name Ann Bannon, is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction". Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her eponymous heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the archetype of a butch lesbian. The majority of her characters mirrored people she knew, but their stories reflected a life she did not feel she was able to live. Despite her traditional upbringing and role in married life, her novels defied conventions for romance stories and depictions of lesbians by addressing complex homosexual relationships.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a 2006 graphic memoir by the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, United States, focusing on her complex relationship with her father. The book addresses themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide, emotional abuse, dysfunctional family life, and the role of literature in understanding oneself and one's family.
Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics.
Paul Burston is a Welsh journalist and author. Born in York and raised in South Wales, Burston attended Brynteg Comprehensive School and studied English, Drama and Film Studies at university. He worked for the London gay policing group GALOP and was an activist with ACT-UP before moving into journalism. He edited, for some years, the gay and lesbian section of Time Out magazine.
Staceyann Chin is a spoken-word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights political activist. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Pittsburgh Daily, and has been featured on 60 Minutes. She was also featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she shared her struggles growing up as a gay person in Jamaica.
Judith Lewis, better known by her pen name Cassandra Clare, is an American author of young adult fiction, best known for her bestselling series The Mortal Instruments.
Tim Federle is an American author, theater librettist, director and screenwriter whose best-known works include the novel Better Nate Than Ever, the cocktail recipe book Tequila Mockingbird, the Golden Globe Award and Academy Awards nominee Ferdinand, and Disney's High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
Andrew Haigh is a British filmmaker.
Kae Tempest is an English spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist and playwright.
Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017).