Actress and advocate Laverne Cox to speak at W&M
Update: Tickets for the event are sold out, but it will be streamed into the Sadler Center's Commonwealth Auditorium. Free tickets for that are now available at the Phi Beta Kappa Hall Box Office. - Ed.
Award-winning transgender actress, producer and advocate Laverne Cox will present William & Mary’s 2018 Atwater Lecture on March 28.
The event, which includes a question-and-answer session, will take place in Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall at 7 p.m. with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. The lecture is sponsored by Alma Mater Productions and the W&M Student Assembly with generous support from the Janet and Peter Atwater Lecture Endowment.
Tickets are $10 for the public and free for students, faculty and staff with ID. They will be available beginning Feb. 28 at the PBK box office for students, faculty and staff, with a limit of one per person. Because ID is required for those tickets, they will not be available online. However, general admission tickets will go on sale March 2 at the PBK box office and online.
Cox is widely known for her role on the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black,” through which she became the first transgender woman of color to have a leading role on a mainstream television show, according to her biography.
She also starred in the Fox remake of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and currently stars on the CBS legal drama “Doubt,” the first broadcast series to feature a series regular character played by a transgender actor. She has also appeared in “The Mindy Project,” “Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce” and “Faking It.”
Her documentary, “Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word,” aired in 2014 on MTV and Logo. She served as both the host and executive producer of the film, which won a Daytime Emmy and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.
Cox produced and starred in VH1’s “TRANSform me,” and she was the first transgender woman of color to appear on an American reality TV program, VH1’s “I Wanna Work for Diddy,” for which she accepted a GLAAD Media Award. In 2014, she received GLAAD’s Stephen F. Kolzak Award.
She has also been nominated for an Emmy Award, a Critic’s Choice Award and consecutive NAACP Image Awards. She appeared on the cover of TIME and received a Screen Actors Guild Award for “Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.”
She has given speeches across the country and was presented with Glamour magazine’s 2014 Woman of the Year Award for her advocacy work. Her accolades also include the Courage Award from the Anti-Violence Project and the Community Leader Award from the LGBT Center of New York City among other honors.
