Ever since I read Mrs Dalloway as a teenager, I have been enamoured by the work of Virginia Woolf, who has quickly grown to become one of my favourite authors. Born in London 1882, Woolf was a founding and influential figure in the famous literary Bloomsbury Group, full of other modernist artists such as the novelist E. M. Forster, author of Maurice, a novel also often lauded by the LGBTQ+ community. The Bloomsbury Group championed the feminist cause and was one of the first movements to collectively question heterosexuality as a societal norm. Alongside her works often studied in literature courses across the world, Woolf is known for her same-sex relationship with Vita Sackville-West, an author and garden designer. Virginia and Vita sent each other love letters throughout their relationship until the former committed suicide in 1941 after a long battle with bipolar disorder. Vita was the inspiration for Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, whose titular character is a transgender woman, and the highly praised 2018 film Vita & Virginia beautifully documents their love story.
Rob Madge (chosen by Sophie)
British theatre is filled with fantastic LGBTQ+ casts and creatives, bringing fantastic stories to life with their own unique perspectives. But none are quite as ground-breaking as Rob Madge. Rob Madge (they/them) is a performer who recently brought their original one-person show My Son’s a Queer (but What Can You Do?) to the West End for two separate runs, telling the story of their childhood and growing up as a queer young person. After a brief hiatus playing Tink in the pantomime Peter Pan at the London Palladium, they are returning with My Son’s a Queer this year, bringing the show to Broadway, making it the first show in New York to use the word ‘queer’ in its title. Rob Madge is one of theatre’s most visible queer stars, with their unique and ground-breaking work bringing queer stories to stages in a way that has never been done before. By being such a fantastic, and crucially visible, presence in the industry, they are leading the way on LGBTQ+ rights, being a vocal activist at a time when LGBTQ+ people are threatened at unprecedented levels. With their Broadway transfer opening later this month, they are set to continue telling their story to entirely new audiences, and continue to shine a light on Non-Binary and LGBTQ+ realities.