Noreen Stevens

Noreen Stevens (born 1962) is a Canadian cartoonist, who created and wrote the lesbian comic strip The Chosen Family.

Stevens was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and grew up in Mississauga, Ontario and Strathroy, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Manitoba with a degree in interior design in 1985. After graduation she began work on a comic strip titled "Local Access Only" for publication in the U of M newspaper, The Manitoban. In 1987, she created The Chosen Family and began producing and self-syndicating bi-weekly strips to LGBTQ+ newspapers and magazines in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia, including Xtra!, Swerve, Herizons, Chicago Outlines and The Washington Blade. Stevens' strips also appeared in The Body Politic, Ms., Gay Comix and several feminist and LGBTQ+ anthologies. Stevens retired the strip in 2004 after producing almost 400 semi-serialize installments.^[1]

From 1993 to 1995, Stevens was an owner and the manager of Winona's Coffee and Ice, the first gay and lesbian café in Winnipeg. In 2003, Stevens and her partner, Jill Town, were the first same-sex couple in Manitoba to jointly adopt two children they had fostered since birth. ^[2] Their adoption experience was featured on a 2009 episode of the Discovery Health Channel series Adoption Stories.

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