The Mrs. Club: A Memoir of Finding Love and the Birth of Marriage Equality is a completed work of literary nonfiction of approximately 70,000 words.

The book blends queer coming-of-age in 1980’s L.A., West Hollywood civic history, AIDS-era memory, marriage equality activism, and a late-blooming love story.

It will appeal to readers of Cleve Jones’s When We Rise and Molly Wizenberg’s The Fixed Stars, blending the inside story of LGBTQ+ civil rights with a candid, emotionally accessible account of queer identity, longing, and lasting love.

Ariel Penn is a writer, producer, and civic storyteller. She served as an assistant to the West Hollywood City Council during the city’s early years and later spent more than twenty-four years as the City of Pasadena’s Filming Manager.

She is the writer and editor of www.Robotopia.Life with over 42,000 followers on Instagram. I was also selected as a sidewalk poet in 2023 by the City of Santa Clarita, CA and appeared in the book The Best Advice in Six Words. I was awarded an L.A. EMMY (Creative Technical Crafts) and received two additional nominations in Public, Municipal Programming. 

She completed UCLA’s Nonfiction Writing Program with distinction in 2017, founded Stonewall Writers, a Facebook community spotlighting LGBTQ+ writers (with over 845 members), and her political writing has been featured by the editors at Medium.com.

For inquiries, please email Ariel directly.