Alison Bechdel is a comic book artist, born September 10, 1960 in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. She was born as the daughter of Helen Augusta (née Fontana) and Bruce Allen Bechdel. She came out as a lesbian at age 19, and her sexuality, as well gender non-conformity in general, have been recurring themes in her work ever since. As she once put in it an interview: "The secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings."
She's probably most well known for her popularizing The Bechdel Test in a strip she drew for her series Dykes to Watch Out For, even though in the strip she credits her friend Liz Wallace for having invented the test.
Apart from the aforementioned long-running comic strip, her works include two memoirs :
