ALISON BECHDEL
Broadway audiences are just now discovering what lesbians have known for years: Alison Bechdel is freaking awesome! Fun Home, the Tony-winning musical based on her 2006 graphic novel, is, following its transfer from the Public Theater, the hottest ticket in town. It´s also the first Broadway show to feature a lead lesbian character (hopefully, the first of many). Bechdel probably could not have imagined this reality when her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For began over 30 years ago. Bechdel syndicated the strip, which commented on lesbian love and politics through a cast of regular characters, from 1983 to 2008. In 2006, she released her first graphic memoir Fun Home, about her complicated relationship with her closeted dad, and that move shot her into the publishing stratosphere: The book won the Publishing Triangle´s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, a Lambda, an Eisner and an American Library Association award, and was named a best book by many publications. Her second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother?, focuses on Bechdel´s artistic mom and was also well-received. In 2014, Bechdel won the coveted MacArthur Genius Grant. Of her recent success, she told The New York Times Magazine, “I´m so glad it didn´t happen when I was younger, because then it would have been all downhill.” -GH
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