Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer is a seminal leader in AIDS mobilization, noted playwright and prominent social commentator. Kramer founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis. It is the world's largest provider of services to those living with AIDS. In 1987, he founded ACT UP, the AIDS advocacy and protest organization. In 1998, he founded Treatment Data Project to gather treatment information by way of the Internet from hundreds of thousands of HIV+ individuals worldwide.

The Normal Heart, his screenplay about the early years of AIDS, has had over 600 productions. Kramer's Just Say No, A Play about a Farce, is about how sexual hypocrisy during the Reagan administration allowed AIDS to become an epidemic. Reports from the Holocaust: the making of an AIDS Activist, is a collection of his political writings from The New York Times and other publications. His 1978 novel, Faggots, is one of the best selling gay novels of all time.

Kramer's 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. He is a recipient of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Kramer created a $1 million endowment to fund the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University.