Kady Van Deurs

Kady (Kathleen) Van Deurs (1928–2003) was a lesbian activist, artist, and writer. She published two books of her writing, titled, The Notebooks That Emma Gave Me: The Autobiography of a Lesbian and Panhandling Papers (1989).

Early life Kady Van Deurs, original name Kathleen, was born in Pensacola, Florida in 1927 to Admiral George Van Deurs, World War II veteran, and Ann Van Deurs. Her father associated her lesbianism with communism and threw her out of the house. She moved to New York City and worked odd-jobs. She struggled with her mental health and after having suicidal thoughts she signed herself into a mental institution. After being threatened with shock therapy, she left, with the help of her father, and went instead to a Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist who drugged her in an attempt to cure her lesbianism. Barbara Deming, Marsha P. Johnson, Diana Davies and Sheila Pepe. She was a member of the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, and Lesbian Feminist Liberation. She designed jewelry with her friend Diana Davies in their studio at 324 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. Anita Leibowitz Page, of Feminist Review, wrote "The autobiography of this lesbian-feminist-anarchist-letter writer and journal keeper, ex-cab driver and ex-Quaker, silversmith, friend of racoons and axe-maker to the Queen—is funny and sad and utterly compelling in its energy and fullness."

She later published Panhandling Papers in 1989 which was a compilation of her writing on her activism throughout the late seventies and eighties.

Later life In her later life, she moved to Greenfield, Massachusetts and continued working on her art. She died in 2003.