New York-based comedian Grace Kuhlenschmidt amassed a huge following thanks to her absurd, often-confusing, and always-hilarious monologues and short character sketches. Kuhlenschmidt got into comedy in college, when she joined first an improv group, then a sketch group, before turning to stand-up. Quickly, she realized she wanted to do comedy professionally. Much of the comedian’s content centers around her lesbian identity, which she made public when she was 19. “When I finally realized I was gay, I made sure the process went as quickly as possible,” Kuhlenschmidt tells GO. “I basically told my friends to spread it like it was a rumor so that as many people knew in the shortest amount of time, and I could go about my gay day.” And as a lesbian, she’s more than happy to provide such vocal and hilarious representation for the queer community, because both comedy and queerness are a major part of who she is. “Being a lesbian is interspersed in every piece of comedy I do, whether that be online or on stage or in my writing,” she says. “Comedy, also, is gay. If I were straight, I not only think I wouldn’t have succeeded at this rate, but I also wouldn’t be cool. And that would be really hard to live through.” —IL
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