Martin Gerald Sherman is an American dramatist and screenwriter best known for his 20 stage plays which have been produced in over 55 countries. He rose to fame in 1979 with the production of his Pulitzer Prize-nominated play Bent, which explores the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust. Bent was a Tony nominee for Best Play in 1980 and won the Dramatists Guild's Hull-Warriner Award. It has been produced in 35 countries and was adapted first by Sherman for a major motion picture in 1997 and later by independent sources as a ballet in Brazil. Sherman is an openly gay Jew, and many of his works dramatize "outsiders," dealing with the discrimination and marginalisation of minorities whether "gay, female, foreign, disabled, different in religion, class or color." He has lived and worked in London since 1980. 

December 22nd, 1938 in Philadelphia (Age 86)