American writer and activist Susie Bright was BOTD in 1958. Born in Arlington, Virginia to a middle-class family, she was raised in Los Angeles, becoming active in the feminist, civil rights and anti-war movements as a teenager. While in high school, she led a civil suit against the Los Angeles Board of Education, arguing for the rights of minors to distribute their own publications without prior censorship or approval. After many years as a labour and community organiser, she joined the staff of women’s sex store Good Vibrations, helping market sex toys to a female and lesbian audience. Describing herself as a sex-positive feminist, she edited the lesbian magazine On Our Backs and wrote a sex advice column as “Susie Expert”. her columns were eventually collated into the 1990 book Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World. During the 1990s, she edited the Herotica erotic short story collections and became a columnist for the San Francisco Review of Books. Known as the “Pauline Kael of Porn”, she became well known for her reviews and commentary on pornography from a feminist and lesbian perspective and discussed LGBTQ film history in the documentaries The Celluloid Closet and Erotica: A Journey into Female Sexuality. She was the on-set intimacy consultant for Lana and Lilly Wachowski‘s 1996 lesbian thriller Bound, and appeared as herself in an episode of TV series Six Feet Under. She now works as an editor and producer for Audible, producing audiobooks by authors including Margaret Atwood, Malcolm X, Frank O’Hara, Dan Savage and Octavia Butler. Bright was in a relationship with sex therapist Honey Lee Cottrell in the 1980s. She lives in Santa Cruz in an open marriage with her husband Jon Bailiff, with whom she has a daughter.