Victoria Brownworth

Brownworth lives in Philadelphia. She and her partner, Maddy Gold, met while attending the Philadelphia High School for Girls and dated off and on for years. Brownworth and Gold had been living together for many years when in 2014 Pennsylvania deemed the ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional, and Brownworth immediately proposed. They were married in October of that year on their 15-year anniversary. Gold died of cancer on Nov. 12, 2022.

In 2010, Brownworth co-founded Tiny Satchel Press, a publishing company that printed young adult books featuring characters from systemically marginalized populations.

In her early-to-mid-thirties, Brownworth started experiencing a number of symptoms she chalked up to being overworked (e.g., general malaise and difficulty walking). In one 18-month period, she broke 13 bones due to her symptoms, though she still believed nothing was seriously wrong. However, when she went blind due to optic neuritis, she visited a doctor who diagnosed her with primary progressive multiple sclerosis, a diagnosis she resisted for over a year. In 1994, she began to use a wheelchair, which she has used on and off since.

In 1993, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Brownworth began focusing primarily on writing books and editing anthologies.

In 1983, Brownworth reported on the "corruption at a Philadelphia based social service agency." She has also won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Mystery for her 2016 novel Ordinary Mayhem.

Since 1981, Brownworth has campaigned for her view that trans women are not real women and should be barred from awards and participation in programs for women.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Brownworth worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. She was the first open lesbian to have a daily column, and may have been the first to have a daily column about lesbian issues. Later, she became the first person to host a lesbian radio program in the United States, Amazon Country on WXPN-FM.

Victoria A. Brownworth (born February 1959 or 1960) is an American journalist, writer, and editor. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, she wrote numerous award-winning articles about AIDS in women, children, and people of color. She was the first person in the United States to write a column about lesbianism in a daily newspaper and host a lesbian radio show.