Sarah Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, historian and lesbian rights activist. She is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at College of Staten Island (CSI) and a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities. Schulman was active in the Women's Union while a student at the University of Chicago from 1976-1978. From 1979-1982, Schulman was a member of The Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA) and participated in an early direct action protest in which she and five others (called The Women's Liberation Zap Action Brigade, disrupted an anti-abortion hearing in Congress. She joined ACT UP, The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, in 1987. She was arrested when ACT UP occupied Grand Central Station protesting the First Gulf War. In 1987, Schulman and filmmaker Jim Hubbard founded the New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, now called MIX and in its twenty-ninth year. In 1992, Schulman and five others co-founded the Lesbian Avengers, a direct action organization. The organization's high points included founding The Dyke March, and sending groups of young organizers to Maine and Idaho to assist local fights against anti-gay ballot initiatives. Since 2001, Schulman has worked with Jim Hubbard to create the ACT UP Oral History Project, and produced a feature documentary, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP which has shown all over the world. To date they have conducted 187 long form interviews with surviving members of ACT UP New York. Sarah has written eleven novels, along with plays and nonfiction works. Schulman was also the US Coordinator of the campaign to free Tarek Loubani and John Greyson from prison in Cairo. Working with Tim McCaskell, Stephen Andrews, Justin Podur, Cecilia Greyson, Mohammed Loubani, Naomi Klein and Dan Malloy in Canada, Matias Viegener in Los Angeles and Ian Iqbal Rashid in Britain, with thousands of volunteers around the world, the campaign was able to rescue the Canadian prisoners in 50 days, an extraordinarily rapid release time for international political prisoners

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