Michele Forsten writes essays, plays and publicity material. Michele’s personal essays and other articles have been published in Mamm magazine, The Advocate, The New York Times and other newspapers nationwide, including the Philadelphia Gay News, San Francisco Bay Times, Outword magazine, Windy City Times, Metro Weekly (Washington, DC) and Watermark (Orlando).
Forsten (left) with fellow NLGJA award winner Laura Kiritsy.
She has been heard on WNYC-FM’s “All Things Considered” and seen on Logo TV.
Her short plays, “Winning?” and “Dinosaur Doc” have been performed in New York City, Provincetown, Boston, San Francisco Brewster, NY, and Madison, WI. “Winning?” was published in Smith & Kraus’ Best Stage Scenes of 2000 and in the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly (Volume I, Number 2).
A full-length play, “Be My Baby!” was a semi-finalist in Playwrights’ Circle’s National New Play Festival in Palm Springs (CA), where it received a staged reading. The play was also a finalist in the Pittsburgh New Play Festival and a semi-finalist in the Moondance International Festival Stage Play Competition and in the London Borough of Newham’s Lesbian & Gay Stage Play Competition. A monologue from “Be My Baby!” was published in Smith & Kraus’ Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2000.
She has been an advocate and spokesperson for a relatively invisible group of people living with cancer — lesbians. She appeared in the books Lives Inspired: Portraits of Breast Cancer Survivors (2009), 
The Breast Cancer Survivor’s Fitness Plan (2007) and NYC LGBT Center publications. She and her spouse appeared in Calendar for the Cure (2008). She told her story to 200 women at the NYC LGBT Center’s first “C Word: Lesbians Coming Together Around Cancer.” In 2004, she co-founded and served as co-director (through 2006) of the New York City Lesbian Cancer Support Consortium, which is now a listserv. (Members of the consortium as of 2006)
Also in 2004, she received the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Media, second place, from the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, for a series of articles on breast cancer.
Co-producer of the 1993 award-winning documentary “Homoteens,” she grew up (debatable) in Coney Island, Brooklyn, and went on to earn an MA in media studies from The New School for Social Research and a BA in English from City College of New York (CCNY).
She is director of communications for New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, NY.
