Born to an unwed fifteen-year-old waitress in South Carolina, Dorothy Allison was the first member of her family to graduate from high school. Against those odds, she has become an international literary sensation for her novels Bastard Out of Carolina
(1992) and Cavedweller
(1998). Published in more than twelve languages, her work has been awarded the Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, three the American Library Association Prizes for Lesbian and Gay Writing, several Lambda Literary Awards including the Ferro Grumley Prize, been named a New York Times Notable book of the year, and she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Lillian Smith prize. Her short fiction, collected in
Trash has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and Best New Stories from the South. Both of her novels have been made into movies. Bastard Out of Carolina was directed by Anjelica Houston, and Cavedweller was directed by Lisa Cholodenko. Allison lives with her partner Alix Layman and teenage son Michael Wolf in Northern California. Riverhead will eventually publish her next novel, She Who.
Playwright and director Charles Ludlam founded the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1967, when he was twenty-four. His plays are a kaleidoscope of high and low art in which the actors each play multiple parts; Ludlam himself usually took the female roles. The Mystery of Irma Vep is his most popular work, featuring two actors (originally Ludlum and his boyfriend Everett Quinton) playing eight characters. It was the most produced play in the United States in 1991 and in 2003 became the longest-running play ever produced in Brazil. A recipient of four Obie Awards, Ludlum was also honored with fellowships from the NEA and the Ford, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Foundations. He died of aids in 1987.
Amy Ray, 47, is one half of the folk rock duo Indigo Girls, who in twenty years have sold more than twelve million albums and been nominated for seven Grammys, winning Best Contemporary Folk Recording in 1990. The first out lesbian duo on the pop charts, they have never been a couple. Ray is in a relationship with Carrie Schrader, a documentary filmmaker. Indigo Girls most recent album, Despite Our Differences, was released last fall and debuted in the top 50 of the Billboard chart. Amy's solo project has a new concert cd MVP Live.
Former enfant terrible Slava Mogutin, 37, still lives to provoke. Born in Siberia (and, according to Wikipedia, “the first openly gay personality in the Russian media”) now a New Yorker (after Amnesty International and
American PEN helped get him political asylum), the writer and photographer is permanently at war with the establishment. A constant and often vulgar critic of Moscow’s leaders, Mogutin has written seven books in Russian, winning the prestigious Andrei Bely Prize in 2000. He aims for a similar shock value in his hatred of establishment gays and loves to antagonize his audience, describing himself as a "cave-based, homo terrorist, pinko commie fag, and propagandist of brutal violence, psychic pathology and sexual perversions." He brings all that angry energy to his photography, which appears regularly in art, fashion, alt, and porn magazines. His best photo book is Lost Boys
followed by NYC Go-Go.

