Alice Oseman does not look like a media titan.
They are not male; they are under 30, and they dress a bit like Portia from The White Lotus. But you’d be a fool to underestimate them; Oseman is fast becoming an industry powerhouse and, more vitally, a queer icon, thanks to their creation Heartstopper, which grew from a web comic into a bestselling series of graphic novels and is now a hit series on Netflix.
Oseman and I have known each other professionally for a long time. We have the same publisher. This was how I came to share a stage with them on tour last year, and when I realised just how phenomenally huge the 28-year-old author, producer and screenwriter had become. Their legion of fans consisted chiefly of giddy, dungaree-clad, pastel-haired, gender-fluid, septum-pierced, Gen Z young adults. They approached the signing table shaking, trembling, hardly able to breathe, as they told Oseman what they, and their work, means to them. In short, Oseman is giving a voice to the very underrepresented Q and A in LGBTQIA. For that reason, as Heartstopper marks a stellar year, Attitude is crowning Oseman Person of the Year.
“Addicted? Absolutely! I have been obsessively creating since I was a child. I’ve always made up characters. It was all I did in my spare time”
