Lillian Faderman (b. 1940) is an internationally-known literary scholar and historian of lesbian history. She has published books and numerous articles on lesbian history, literature and criticism including: her memoir, Naked in the Promised Land (2003) Gay L.A. (2006), which she co-authored with Stuart Timmons; Surpassing the Love of Men (1981), an acclaimed study of five centuries of love between women, and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1991), a history of twentieth-century lesbians in America. Surpassing and Odd Girls were both named among The New York Times notable books of the year.

Faderman's work is oriented towards building a lesbian tradition and what she calls a "usable past." In her early works, especially in Surpassing the Love of Men and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, she offered new frameworks for so-called romantic friendships between women, which were considered neither abnormal nor undesirable in prior centuries and established that women who loved women in the past were not always made to live like outlaws. Her work argued that it was only after 1980, in the aftermath of sexology, did same-sex love between women come to be seen as suspect, degenerate, or even criminal. Faderman has also written on the theme of same-sex love and romantic friendship in poems and letters of Emily Dickenson; in novels by Henry James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; and in popular magazine fiction of the early twentieth century.

Faderman's later book, To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America–A History (1999) is the culmination of her two previous books, Surpassing the Love of Men, and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. It charts romantic friendships between women and lesbian love through some of the most important social movements in the U.S. and shows how these same-sex partnerships made major feminist causes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries possible.

Faderman's other major books, each groundbreaking upon publication, include: Lesbians in Germany (1980), her first work in lesbian history; Scotch Verdict (1983), which chronicles the 1810 trial of two Scottish school teachers accused of lesbianism; Chloe Plus Olivia (1994), an anthology of lesbian literature since the seventeenth century and I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (1998), which records the story of 36 Hmong immigrants to California. Her articles on lesbian life and literature have appeared in diverse academic, feminist, and lesbian journals, including The New England Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Journal of Popular Culture, Higginson Journal, Journal of Homosexuality, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Conditions and Gay Books Bibliography.

Faderman was born July 18, 1940 in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of a single working mother who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Throughout her childhood, Faderman's dream was to become a movie star. Faderman's family moved to east L.A. when she was a teen and she later attended U.C. Berkeley, where she worked as a burlesque stripper to support herself. She received a B.A. in English literature from U.C. Berkeley in 1962, an M.A. in English from UCLA in 1964, and a Ph.D. in English from UCLA in 1967. In 1967, Faderman started teaching in the English department at California State University, Fresno, where she began her career co-editing two anthologies of American multi-ethnic literature: Speaking for Ourselves: American Ethnic Writing (1969; 1975) and From the Barrio: A Chicano Anthology (1973).

Faderman served in various administrative positions (1971-1976) at California State University, Fresno, including Chair of the English Department, Acting Dean of the School of Humanities, and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and then decided she preferred teaching and writing. Faderman, along with Phyllis Irwin, helped establish the first women's study program at California State University, Fresno in 1972. She was promoted to Professor of English in 1973. Irwin later became her domestic partner of 40 years. They have one child: Avrom (b. 1975).

Throughout her career, Faderman has been sought after as a speaker, teacher, critic, and visiting lecturer. Faderman has been a frequent speaker at lesbian and feminist organizations, universities, and lesbian, gay and women's organizations nationally and internationally, including the Modern Language Association (MLA), the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), GAU (Gay Academic Union) and the Berkshire Women's History Conference.

Faderman's work has been translated into numerous languages, including German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Czech, and Slovenian. Among her many honors are six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards, and several lifetime achievement awards for scholarship, including Yale University's James Brudner Award, the Monette/Horwitz Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives Culture Hero Award, and the American Association of University Women's Distinguished Senior Scholar Award. She divides her time between Fresno and San Diego.

Source: Janine Liebert, “Lillian Faderman papers (Collection 1849),” UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles, accessed November 6, 2023, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1580333s/entire_text/