Larry Kramer

b. June 25, 1935

Larry Kramer is an award-winning playwright, commentator and pioneering AIDS activist.

"We're all going to go crazy, living this epidemic every minute, while the rest of the world goes on out there, all around us, as if nothing is happening, going on with their own lives and not knowing what it's like, what we're going through. We're living through war, but where they're living it's peacetime, and we're all in the same country."

After graduating from Yale University in 1957, Larry Kramer began his professional life in the film industry. He co-produced and co-wrote Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, which became the number one film in Britain. He wrote the screenplay for and produced Women in Love, based on D. H. Lawrence's novel. The film received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Screenplay.

Faggots, Kramer's 1978 novel, continues to be one of the best selling of all gay-themed novels. The Normal Heart, his 1985 play about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, holds the record as the longest-running play at Joseph Papp's Public Theater in New York. His non-fiction book Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist, published in 1989, is an important record of AIDS activism.

Kramer's 1992 play The Destiny of Me was awarded an Obie, the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play, and the Hull-Warriner Award by the Dramatists' Guild.

Kramer was a founder of the AIDS advocacy organization Gay Men's Health Crisis. In 1987, he helped found ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power).

Kramer is a recipient of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the first creative artist and the first openly gay person to be honored by a Public Service Award from Common Cause.

Susan Sontag said of him, "Larry Kramer is one of America's most valuable troublemakers. I hope he never lowers his voice."

Bibliography:

• Specter, Michael, "Public Nuisance: Larry Kramer, the man who warned America about AIDS, can't stop fighting hard and loudly," The New Yorker, May 13, 2002.

Selected works by Larry Kramer:

• Faggots. Grove Press (reprint), 2000.
• Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of an AIDS Activist. St. Martin's Press, 1994.
• The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me. Grove Press, 2000.
• We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer. Palgrave McMillan, 1999.