The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

Jessica Max Stein ("Max") has been a New York-based queer writer since the early 90s. She teaches English at the City University of New York (CUNY).

Stein’s writing appears regularly in make/shift magazine and on The Bilerico Project. A former editor and reporter for the New York Indypendent, Stein received an Independent Press Association Award for her editorial on the anti-gay murder of Sakia Gunn. Stein’s work also garnered an Amy Award for young writers from Poets and Writers magazine.

Stein is best known for her work on Muppet performer Richard Hunt, the charismatic gay puppeteer behind such icons as Beaker, Scooter, and Janice. Stein is writing a full-length biography of Hunt, entitled The Rainbow Connection: The Life and Times of Richard Hunt.

In 2009 Stein self-published a zine version of The Rainbow Connection, telling Hunt’s story in 90 pages from over a hundred secondary sources. The publication (or “zine”) was a runaway success, with over 500 distributed throughout America and as far away as Australia, Singapore and England. A 15-city cross-country Rainbow Connection tour drew crowds at bookstores, colleges and theaters, including a full house at New York’s Dixon Place.

The Rainbow Connection is Stein's tenth zine. Previous zines chronicle her contemporary queer life in creative nonfiction, including The Long Walk Back to Myself, a perennial best-seller at Microcosm Publishing; and Body, Language, an Honorable Mention in the 2007 Zine Yearbook.

Stein is proud to cover queer news and pop culture for the Bilerico Project!