Larry Kramer (born June 25, 1935) is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for Women in Love in 1969, earning an Academy Award nomination for his efforts. Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his 1978 novel Faggots, which earned mixed reviews but emphatic denunciations from the gay community for his portrayal of shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s.
Kramer witnessed the first spread of the disease that became known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) among his friends in 1980, and he co-founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which has become the largest private organization to assist people living with AIDS in the world. Not content with the social services GMHC provided, Kramer expressed his frustration with bureaucratic paralysis and the apathy of gay men to the AIDS crisis by writing a play titled The Normal Heart which was produced at The Public Theatre in New York City in 1985. His political activism extended to the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987, a direct action protest organization widely credited with changing public health policy and widespread perception of people living with AIDS (PWAs) and awareness of HIV and AIDS-related diseases. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his play The Destiny of Me (1992), and has been a two-time recipient of the Obie Award. Kramer currently lives in New York City and Connecticut.
Kramer was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, as a second child that his parents did not want. The family moved soon to Maryland where Kramer attended school, although they found themselves with a much lower income than Kramer's high school peers. His father pressed him to marry a woman with money, and insisted he become a member of Pi Tau Pi, a Jewish fraternity. Kramer had become sexually involved with a male friend in junior high school, but he dated young women in high school.
He enrolled at Yale University in 1953, but did not adjust well. He was lonely and his grades were poorer than he was accustomed. He tried to kill himself by overdosing on aspirin because he thought he was the "only gay student on campus". The experience left him determined to explore his sexuality and set him on the path to fighting "for gay people's worth". The next semester, he had an affair with his German professor...his first requited romantic relationship with a man. When the professor was scheduled to study in Europe, he invited Kramer, but Kramer decided not to go. Yale had been a family tradition: his father, older brother Arthur, and two uncles were alumni. Kramer instead enjoyed the Varsity Glee Club while at Yale. He graduated in 1957 with a degree in English.