Nancylee Myatt

Nancylee Myatt wanted to be an actor, but it took a friend’s blunt advice to set her on a different path. “Nancylee, you suck as an actress,” the friend told her. “But the shit you write for us is great.” She took those words to heart and instead became an Emmy-winning and GLAAD Award-nominated television writer and producer. At the time, LGBTQ characters were only beginning to emerge on TV. “I was often hired to help write those authentic voices,” Myatt says. “You know, the token lez.” But it was her authentic voice that made those characters memorable. She went on to write the first produced pilot for a major network with a lesbian couple, Nikki & Nora, about a romantic pair who work together on the police force in New Orleans. Myatt wrote the film adaptation for the beloved gay teen novel Annie on My Mind. And she served as showrunner and co-executive producer for the first two seasons of the popular lesbian teen series South of Nowhere. Myatt has seen the impact her work has made on LGBTQ youth first-hand. “I’ve had kids — lesbians, trans boys, girls, gay boys, queer folks — come up to me saying, sometimes tearfully, how something I wrote made them feel safer, more validated, and gave them actual hope.” Now, in the current political climate, Myatt hopes the generation of LGBTQ youth that were inspired by her characters will carry the torch. “Find your cause and turn it into a passion,” she says. “Your elders are counting on you to pick up where we left off.” —SEJ