Jan Gay

Jan Gay (born Helen Reitman, 1902–1960) was a German-born American journalist, author, activist, and researcher.[1]

She is known for her pioneering research on the realities of gays and lesbians in 1930s Europe and the US, conducted as part of the Committee for the Study of Sex Variants. Previously, she had visited Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science.[2]

Gay was also a relevant early figure of nudism in the US, a topic on which she wrote the essay On Going Naked (1932) and the script of the documentary This Naked Age (1932).[2] She also wrote several children's books, some of them in collaboration with her partner the illustrator Zhenya Gay.[3] Her story gained prominence after the publication of the investigative novel Blackouts (2023) by Justin Torres, the winner of the 2024 National Book Award.[2]

  1. ^ "JAN GAY IS DEAD AT 58; Author and Publicist Wrote Six Books for Children". The New York Times. 13 September 1960. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
  2. ^ a b c Barone, Joshua (11 October 2023). "Justin Torres Finds Inspiration in the Erasures of Queer History". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference :5 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).