During the 2026 Women Writers Committee meeting, Jennifer Finney Boylan delivered a lecture titled “Trans Rights and Abortion Rights Are Two Sides of the Same Coin.” Drawing from her experiences as a transgender woman, Boylan spoke candidly about the discrimination, hostility, and violence she encountered during her early adult years and throughout her life. She reflected on the changing political landscape surrounding gender identity and bodily autonomy, arguing that attacks on transgender rights and reproductive rights stem from a common effort to restrict individual freedom and self-determination.

Boylan discussed how transgender people have increasingly become a focal point of conservative political discourse. As she remarked, “When I came out in the year 2000, Republicans barely registered trans identities, let alone attacked them. Now, more than two decades later, we’ve become the right’s favorite boogeyman.” She suggested that this shift mirrors earlier political campaigns against abortion rights, noting that public narratives often rely on exaggerated claims about the prevalence or influence of marginalized groups in order to generate fear and justify restrictive policies. In her view, transgender people have become the latest target of a broader cultural strategy that seeks to frame personal autonomy as a social threat.

Throughout the lecture, Boylan emphasized the importance of empathy, solidarity, and the defense of human dignity. Her presentation underscored the role of writers in challenging misinformation, fostering understanding, and safeguarding freedom of expression for all people.

Celebrating LGBTQ+ Women Writers: Our Stories, Our Voices, Our Pride

Pride Month offers an opportunity not only to celebrate identity and community, but also to recognize the writers whose words have expanded our understanding of both. Throughout history, LGBTQ+ women writers have challenged conventions, broadened literary horizons, and given voice to experiences that were often overlooked or silenced. Through fiction, poetry, memoir, and journalism, they have documented lives lived at the margins while imagining more inclusive and equitable futures.

Their contributions extend far beyond representation. LGBTQ+ women writers have enriched literature with new perspectives on love, family, belonging, resistance, and self-discovery. Their work reminds us that storytelling is both a creative act and a powerful means of fostering empathy, preserving memory, and affirming human dignity.

This Pride Month, the Women Writers Committee celebrates the achievements, resilience, and creativity of LGBTQ+ women writers around the world. By highlighting their voices and stories, we honor the enduring role of literature in advancing freedom of expression, expanding visibility, and building connections across communities.

Journalist, writer and LGBTQI campaigner Lyra McKee was shot dead on 18 April 2019 by a masked gunman as she was observing a riot on the Creggan estate in Derry, Northern Ireland. She was standing beside a police vehicle when a gunman fired on police officers and onlookers. She died in hospital soon afterwards. On 14 September 2022, Niall Sheerin, from Derry, was sentenced to seven years in prison for possessing the gun used to murder McKee. Three men from Derry have been charged with her murder. Their trial opened in May 2024 and was ongoing as of 31 December 2024.

The first killing of a journalist in Northern Ireland since that of Martin O’Hagan in 2001,

Lyra McKee’s death was met with outrage from political leaders and others in Ireland and worldwide. On 23 April 2019, the ‘New IRA’ paramilitary group issued a statement in which it issued ‘sincere apologies’ for McKee’s death, adding that she was not the intended target. By the time she died, aged 29, McKee had worked on numerous print and online publications including Buzzfeed, Private Eye, The Atlantic and the Belfast Telegraph. Her hugely popular blog, ‘Letters to my 14-year-old self’, chronicled her experiences as a gay woman. In June 2019, her book Angels with Blue Faces, based on her four-year investigation into the killing of an MP, was published posthumously. At the time of her death, she was working on a second book, The Lost Boys, about the disappearance of children in Northern Ireland, which remains under review. A collection of her writings, Lost, Found, Remembered, was published in 2020.