American playwright and activist Eve Ensler (now known as V) was BOTD in 1953. Born in New York City to a middle-class family, she was raised in upstate New York. Later in life, she revealed that she had been sexually abused by her father for much of her early childhood. In the early 1970s, she attended Middlebury College in Vermont, where she embraced radical feminism. After several years struggling with alcohol and drug use and abusive relationships, she married bartender Richard McDermott, who encouraged her to seek addiction treatment. She later adopted Richard’s son Dylan, eventually separating from Richard in 1988. She wrote and produced her first play Lemonade in 1981, pursuing a career as a playwright. She is best known for her non-fiction play The Vagina Monologues, a series of stories based on real interviews with women discussing their bodies, heterosexual and lesbian identities, sexual experiences and accounts of rape and genital mutilation. Initially performed by Ensler as a solo show, it had a successful Off-Broadway production in 1996. Following her departure from the show, she rewrote the play to be performed by three actors, at least one of whom was a person of colour. The play quickly became a hit, performed by amateur and professional companies around the world, and was credited with de-stigmatising the word “vagina” in public discourse. New York Times theatre critic Charles Isherwood described the play as “probably the most important piece of political theatre of the last decade”. In 1998, Ensler launched the V-Day fundraising initiative to stop violence against women and girls, beginning with a benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues starring Gloria Steinem, Whoopi Goldberg, and Glenn Close. In 2001, V-Day sold out New York’s Madison Square Garden with more than 70 actors performing, including Close, Steinem, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, Calista Flockhart and Lily Tomlin. As the play’s popularity grew, it was criticised for not being sufficiently inclusive of trans women and contributing to colonialist perceptions of women of colour. One monologue, in which a 13 year-old woman describes a positive sexual experience with an older woman, ending with the line “If it was rape, it was a good rape”, provoked widespread controversy, resulting in Ensler changing the woman’s age to 16 and removing the final line. In 2004, the first all-transgender production of The Vagina Monologues was staged in West Hollywood, directed by Calpernia Addams and featuring a new trans-themed monologue written by Ensler. The 2006 documentary Beautiful Daughters chronicled the genesis of the production and the cast’s attempts to reconcile Ensler’s text with their own experiences as trans women. In 2011, Ensler received an honorary Tony Award, in recognition of her political activism and the V-Day movement. Her subsequent plays have been less widely performed, though her 2013 book In the Body of the World, recounting her battle with uterine cancer, became a bestseller. Her 2019 memoir, The Apology, detailed her father’s physical and sexual abuse and announced her name change to V, explaining that she no longer wished to be called by his surname. She continues to write, perform and agitate for women’s rights. Her current relationship status is unknown.