Gwendolyn Ann Smith


Gwendolyn Smith is a transgender woman who founded Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to memorialize people who have been killed as a result of anti-transgender prejudice. Trans/Active: A Biography of Gwendolyn Ann Smith is a biography about Smith published in July 2017.

Life

Born July 22, 1967, Smith is a transgender activist, writer, and graphic designer. From 1993 to 1998, she ran the Transgender Community Forum on AOL, which was one of the first public online forums for transgender people. Since 2000, she has been a columnist for the Bay Area Reporter. Her column is called "Transmissions." Her essay, "We're all Someone's Freak," is in the Norton Reader 14th edition. She also manages the website Genderfork.
Smith founded a website called Remembering Our Dead, which memorializes people who have died as a direct result of hatred and prejudice based on gender. Today the list is hosted on the Transgender Day of Remembrance website, which now publishes information about people who have been murdered due to anti-transgender violence. In 2016, Gwendolyn Smith wrote an article for Huffington Post titled, "Transgender Day of Remembrance: Why We Remember". In addition, she is published in Kate Bornstein's book, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Smith began Transgender Day of Remembrance in November 1999 to honor Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was murdered in 1998. It now happens every year on November 20, and is observed all over the United States, in over 200 cities, and in different countries. More recently, Transgender Awareness Week is the week of November 14–20. The event is grassroots, but is coordinated by the Remembering Our Dead Project and the official TDOR website