Remembering GLF Member Zazu Nova
One of the often-overlooked figures whose resistance helped shape the early LGBTQ liberation movement.
Zazu Nova at a GLF Meeting
Photo from NYPL Diana Davies Collection
Zazu Nova took part in the Stonewall uprising, and her name appears repeatedly in recollections of the rebellion and the liberation movement that followed. She was described at the time as a “street queen” and was a gender-nonconforming activist. Although relatively little is known about her life, multiple witnesses remembered Nova as part of the community of young gender-nonconforming people who gathered around Christopher Street in the years leading up to Stonewall.
Participants remembered her as one of the people who actively resisted police during the rebellion. However, accounts differ in their details and were often recorded years after the events. As with many aspects of Stonewall history, the available evidence consists largely of participant testimony rather than extensive contemporary documentation.
Stephen Cohen’s The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York places Nova within the world of queer street youth who helped shape the earliest post-Stonewall organizing efforts. These young activists challenged not only anti-gay laws and police harassment but also prevailing expectations about gender expression, public visibility, and who could participate in the emerging liberation movement.
Nova was a member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and a founding member of Gay Youth. She was also a founding member of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) and participated in the GLF demonstration at NYU and the occupation of Weinstein Hall.
She is also credited with contributing to the first issue of Come Out! and wrote an article for GLF News about the newly formed Gay Youth. After the dissolution of GLF, Nova disappeared from the historical record.
Today, Zazu Nova occupies an important place in Stonewall history not because every detail of her life is known, but because repeated mentions of her in oral histories, memoirs, and participant recollections highlights the role of gender-nonconforming people, drag queens, and street youth in the uprising and the movement that followed.
Her story is a reminder that many of the people who helped change history left behind only fragments of the historical record.
Print Resources:
Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004.
Cohen, Stephan L. The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Tourmaline. Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson. New York: Penguin Press, 2025.
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