Madelyn Arnold

Madelyn Arnold was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1950.^[1] Her childhood was marked by poverty and abuse, and she became responsible for taking care of the household at only 8 years old.^[1] She became involved in political activism as a teenager, joining the NAACP in high school and writing to Socialist political candidates for information.^[2]

Arnold attended college at Ball State University starting around age 16, studying biology and medical illustration.^[1] It was there that she discovered her lesbian identity, and after being outed she was forced to leave the school.^[1] She did eventually obtain a bachelor's in microbiology from Indiana University Bloomington in 1973, but she also became homeless and was institutionalized for a period before finding a new home in Seattle, Washington, in 1975.^[1][3][4]

In Seattle, she worked in labs, hospitals, and clinics throughout the 1970s and '80s.^[1][4] She went on to obtain a master's in creative writing from the University of Washington.^[1]

Arnold's debut novel, Bird-Eyes, was published in 1988 to critical acclaim.^[3][4] Distributed by Seal Press, it won the inaugural Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction in 1989.^{[1][3][4][5][6]} It fictionalized her real experiences with institutionalization as a teenager, in a period when queer women were frequently committed to mental institutions.^[1][7][8][9] It was later re-released by St. Martin's Press.^[1]

In 1992, she released the short story collection On Ships at Sea, which included pieces she had been working on since 1976.^[3][6] The collection, published by St. Martin's Press, features predominantly lesbian characters in a wide variety of circumstances.^[3] It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction the following year.^[10]

Then, in 2000, she published the novel A Year of Full Moons, which tells the story of a tomboy girl named Josephine Margaret Butler growing up in Kentucky during the turbulent political year of 1963.^[2][6][7]

Arnold has been a longtime contributor to the Seattle Gay News, for which she wrote the column "Not Thinking Straight."^[1][2] She also wrote for the Zodiac News Service^[1] and has taught fiction at the University of Washington and Seattle Central Community College.^[3][7]