Marcia M. Gallo is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She received her PhD in history with specialization in gender and sexuality from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2004. Her book, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, won the 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2007, Gallo received the Passing the Torch Award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY for her scholarship on feminist and lesbian activism. She is now working on a book about Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, who was murdered in Queens, New York in 1964 and became an international symbol of urban apathy, the "bystander syndrome," and the failure of community.

A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Gallo was Field Director for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco before entering academia. She also served as Director of Development and Donor Relations with the Funding Exchange, a network of progressive community-based foundations headquartered in New York.