Series Writer Lynn Phillips (1945-2017)

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Lynn Phillips - fiery intellectual, committed feminist, and eclectic writer - passed away on January 5 from complications from lung cancer.

Lynn wrote and edited for film, television, print, and online media over the course of several decades. She was a staff writer for the groundbreaking Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, produced by Norman Lear. She wrote for publications such as Glamour, The Harvard Lampoon, The Realist, The Nation, Nerve, The New York Times' T Magazine, Psychology Today, and Newsweek International. In the 1990s, she served as editor-in-chief of vaguepolitix.com, a website originally hosted by PBS,org, and also wrote erotic political satire under the pen name Maggie Cutler. Additional work included songs, television and film treatments, several musicals and screenplays, as well as an operetta, I Ching, cowritten with Galt MacDermot.

Lynn wrote Self-Loathing for Beginners, which Library Journal described as "A gleefully sardonic guide to self-condemnation and disapproval." She was coauthor, with Diane Hartford, Rusty Unger, and Milo Steale, of How to Be a Mogul. She wrote and illustrated a children's book for the daughters of feminists, Exactly Like Me, and is listed in Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975.

In the late 1960s, Lynn joined The Newsreel, a collective of independent filmmakers, photographers, and media workers formed to make politically relevant films. She was the first woman to edit a Newsreel film, The Columbia Revolt. She was the cofounder, coeditor, and writer for Getting It Gazette, the women's newsletter for Republican and Democratic delegates in 1992 and 1996, and the creator of The Lordville Bridge, a humorous and acutely observant quarterly about the colorful residents and peculiar happenings in the namesake town near the headwaters of the Delaware River.

Born in New York City in 1945, Lynn attended the High School of Music & Art and graduated from Harvard University with a BAFA in Fine Arts in 1966. Her papers and literary works are to be archived by Harvard University's Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Selected recent works can be read online at www.lynnphillips.net and www.lynn-phillips.com/archive.

Ever a sharp and incisive political commentator, Lynn wrote scathingly on social media of the incoming POTUS, saying, "do not for a second recognize the legitimacy of this white male supremacist coup d'etat. Say 'naw.' Say 'fuggeddaboudit.' Say 'over my dead body' if you have to. But don't say, 'Let's give them a chance…' The surrender of democracy does not enable democracy, no matter how many people vote for it. Lies are lies no matter how often repeated. [He] lost the popular vote. He may have won the cup but he didn't win the right to break it."

Lynn resided in New York City and Lordville, New York. She was a practitioner of Ed Ware's Wu Style Tai Chi, an avid gardener, fabulous cook and host, talented visual artist, and a friend to cats. She is survived by her husband James Raglione and her brother Jonathan Phillips.