Madelyn Arnold

Madelyn Arnold (born 1950) is an American fiction writer. In 1989, she won the inaugural Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction for her novel Bird-Eyes.

Early life and education Madelyn Arnold was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1950. Her childhood was marked by poverty and abuse, and she became responsible for taking care of the household at only 8 years old.

Arnold attended college at Ball State University starting around age 16, studying biology and medical illustration.

In Seattle, she worked in labs, hospitals, and clinics throughout the 1970s and '80s. It fictionalized her real experiences with institutionalization as a teenager, in a period when queer women were frequently committed to mental institutions. It was later re-released by St. Martin's Press.

Then, in 2000, she published the novel A Year of Full Moons, which tells the story of a tomboy girl named Josephine Margaret Butler growing up in Kentucky during the turbulent political year of 1963.

Arnold has been a longtime contributor to the Seattle Gay News, for which she wrote the column "Not Thinking Straight." She also wrote for the Zodiac News Service and has taught fiction at the University of Washington and Seattle Central Community College.