Who

Playwright and feminist activist Eve Ensler is the creator of The Vagina Monologues, a series of vignettes about women's relationships with their hoohas.

Backstory

Ensler had a difficult upbringing and was subjected to violence and sexual abuse at the hands of her father, which contributed to bouts of alcoholism and, ultimately, her dedication to women's causes. She was in her mid-40s when she first achieved major success with The Vagina Monologues, which opened in 1996 and became a word-of-mouth sensation. It's since been performed on hundreds of college campuses and in dozens of countries from Turkey to China. Alas, Ensler's more recent plays haven't fared nearly as well: 2004's The Good Body—about what the perennially black bobbed, red lipsticked playwright views as women's dysfunctional obsession with their looks—earned middling reviews; 2006's The Treatment was critically panned with the Times' Charles Isherwood declaring it an "overwrought amalgam of psychodrama and political sermonizing." Also in 2006 Ensler published a memoir, Insecure at Last: Losing it in a Security Obsessed World.

Of note

Ensler continues to be best known for The Vagina Monologues, which has not only made her wealthy, but satisfies her appetite for the spotlight and for schmoozing with celebrities. Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, Teri Hatcher, Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Brooke Shields, Calista Flockhart and Oprah Winfrey have all taken part in V-Day, a performance of The Vagina Monologues every Valentine's Day which raises money to battle crimes against women, and boosts participants' political cred in the process.

Pet cause

Ensler runs a writing group at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, which got the documentary treatment in What I Want My Words To Do To You.

Personal

At the age of 26, Ensler married bartender Richard McDermott and adopted his teenage son, future primetime hunk Dylan McDermott. The couple divorced in 1989 and Ensler began seeing Ariel Orr Jordan, a psychotherapist. In 2005, the couple split; their break-up made headlines when they wrangled over ownership of their West Village residence, as well as over profits derived from The Vagina Monologues, which Jordan claims was based on his therapy workshop "If your vagina could talk, what would it say?" Ensler now lives alone near the Flatiron building, in an apartment that cost her $2.4 million in 2005.