W&L’s Contact Presents Laverne Cox of “Orange Is the New Black”
Laverne Cox, best known for her recurring role in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” will speak at Washington and Lee University on May 21, at 7 p.m. in Lee Chapel. The event is sponsored by the Contact Committee.
The title of the talk is “Ain’t I a Woman: My Journey To Womanhood.” It is open to the public and tickets are not required.
On “Orange Is the New Black,” Cox is known as Sophia Burset, a transgender woman sent to prison for credit-card fraud. Cox is also a reality television star, television producer and LGBT advocate. She is known for appearing as a contestant on the first season of VH1’s “I Want to Work for Diddy” and for producing and co-hosting the VH1 makeover television series “TRANSform Me.”
In April 2014, Cox was honored by GLAAD, a U.S. non-governmental media monitoring organization founded by LGBT people in the media, with its Stephen F. Kolzak Award for her work as an advocate for the transgender community.
She has earned numerous honors and award nominations for her work and advocacy and has been awarded a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in “Orange Is the New Black.”
She was also named one of Glamour magazine’s 2014 Women of the Year, one of The Grio’s (African American Breaking News and Opinion) 100 Most Influential African Americans, one of the Top 50 Trans Icons by the Huffington Post and honored with the Courage Award from the Anti-Violence Project and the Reader’s Choice Award from “Out” Magazine, among other accolades.
