Shelly Roberts

Shelly Roberts, nee Rhodes, born in Chicago, Illinois 1943. Moved at age 2.5 to Los Angeles suburb of Westchester, near the LA International airport at a time when it was still possible, from the backyard porch, to look over the beanfields to see the lights of the Sunset Strip.

She took humor seriously and specialized in Surrealism in Everyday Life with her first humor/observation column, Cross Rhodes, in her Senior year high school journalism class.

Shelly attended the University of California @ Berkeley during the rebellious Sproul Hall 1960 years but didn't become an activist until the publication of her first "let's take this seriously with a little laughter." book, What to do with a Liberated Woman. It was at a time when most of the US, except, of course, the women, thought "Women's Lib" was a joke.

Humor has always buoyed her during times of conflict and human miscommunication, so it was no surprise, after coming out in the 70's in Europe, returning to LA, she explored her new social environment with the same vigor and humor she brought to her later literary endeavors.

Shelly pursued a national and international career in advertising, starting in Los Angeles, and then Chicago, and taking her to Seattle, Washington where, as Associate Creative Director for a national ad agency, she won awards selling you a tasty regional beer. Between filming these award winning tv commercials, she teamed with her illustrator and then boss, Fred Hilliard, to create What to Do With A Liberated Woman, a primer on the new etiquette.

Feeling the pull of "the Big Time" Shelly moved to Chicago to sell you more beer, and airline seats, from there to NYC, where, appearing as the Real Shelly Roberts on the television show, To Tell The Truth, she was not surprised to find that the panel chose the only man posing as the feminist-explainer/author as the real her. For fooling the celebrity panel, her prize was a (now defunct) Sinclair game machine that came with a "computer" cartridge, a coincidental occurrence that later cascaded into her many following humor offerings.

While working in New York in the 1980s, successfully selling you toilet paper, soup and, yes, beer, she honed her razor humor by writing a humor/observation column for nascent Commodore Computer users, one of which she purchased at Macy's new computer department. It was actually a small room on an upper floor featuring expensive, but overly friendly Apple machines and quixotic IBMs which,at exorbitant prices, quickly delivered "system error in 9884-0945" messages. The Commodore computer was a very smart and prescient buy, after a particularly lucrative bonu$ year. AND you could hook it up to your already purchased tv set. That seemingly insignificant purchase culminated in the publication of her next serious/humor book, I'm Sorry But I don't Speak Hexadecimal.

Finding that most of the humorous offerings to her newly adopted, differently-sexual community were rather thin, and a lot less funny, Shelly turned her attention to defining the difficult, but perennial search for female-to-female partners, friends, lovers, and evil-bitch enemies, with her first LBGT book, The Dyke Detector. It was then a dangerous time to make an identifying mistake, but that world was ready for some light, accurate, helpful advice. Her kidding-on-the-square approach, plus her national experience at advertising and promotion, moved The Dyke Detector to national niche market best seller.

Moving from New York City to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to take a non-refusable job offer as VP, Creative Director at a small, prominent ad agency there, Shelly joined the lesbian women's group, Women In Network, where she soon joined the Board of Directors, and for the back page of their newsletter, began yet another humor/observation column on the joys and surrealism of lesbian life. During this time, this column was first picked up by the South Florida LGBT newspaper, The Weekly News, then by several hundred GLBT newspapers across the US and internationally in England, Italy, and surprisingly, Japan.

That column, originally entitled "Cleaning Out My Closet" was subsequently syndicated as "Roberts' Rules." The column evolved into a trio of humor books proving that the "Rules" for lesbians were not merely adaptations of heterosexual behavior, but were unique, and definable. And, of course, with the Roberts sensibility, humorous.

Roberts has been "Grand Marshall" of 37 Pride Day parades throughout the US, was on the National Board of Human Rights Campaign, and is frequently invited to guest speak at LGBTQ events. Never sacrificing her professional advertising, branding and strategy career, she spent half a decade in a senior position at an international advertising agency, serving for them in Bucharest, Romania as VP, Executive Creative Director, then opened her own international marketing strategy consulting firm, FireBrand, which still accepts occasional assignments from selected clients.

Shelly returned to South Florida in 2018 to spend her senior years among friends in Fort Lauderdale, renewing old friendships and gaining new ones. "Invite me to everything," she says, restructuring a joyous South Florida social life. "I will appear at the opening of an envelope if it means I get to meet you." she opines.

Shelly's next project in process is "Great Dames," an exhibit of her portrait photos of lesbian women in their fabulous senior years. A subsequent publication is anticipated.