Anne Balay

Anne Balay is an American labor historian. A former professor at Indiana University Northwest, she is best known for her oral history collections of LGBT workers: Steel Closets and Semi Queer (2018).

Biography After graduating from Wilbur Cross High School, she obtained her A.B. (1986), A.M. (1988), and PhD (1994) from the University of Chicago. After getting her degrees, she worked as a car mechanic from 1996 to 2001. She was a lecturer at the University of Illinois Chicago from 2001 to 2007 and an assistant professor at Indiana University Northwest from 2007 to 2014.

In 2014, she published Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers, a collection of oral histories from LGBT steelworkers; the oral histories had been obtained over a course of five years. The book was one of two winners of the National Women's Studies Association's 2014 Sara A. Whaley Prize. In 2015, she was one of the two winners of the Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award at the 27th Lambda Literary Awards. The same year, Balay became a visiting assistant professor at Haverford College, Balay had spent some time working as a truck driver after failing to obtain tenure at IU Northwest.

In August 2022, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced that Balay was one of the first sixteen people appointed to its Women of Trucking Advisory Board. Balay was the only higher education organizer for Service Employees International Union Local 1 until she was laid off on January 31, 2023.

Balay has two children.