Leslie Feinberg, the author of the seminal transgender coming-of-age novel "Stone Butch Blues," died Saturday, Nov. 15 at her Syracuse, New York home in at the age of 65. Feinberg's death prompted a number of tributes via social media with Emily Nussbaum, a critic for the New Yorker, expressing on Twitter her dismay: "Just read that Leslie Feinberg died. Very sad: Stone Butch Blues is indelible."

Feinberg who preferred the use of "ze/hir" pronouns according to Camp, succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, since the 1970s, according to The Advocate.

In a statement made toward the end of her life, Feinberg noted she had "never been in search of a common umbrella identity, or even an umbrella term, that brings together people of oppressed sexes, gender expressions, and sexualities." The Lambda Literary Award-winning author also stated that she "believed in the right of self-determination of oppressed individuals, communities, groups, and nations," according to The Advocate.

Although born female in Kansas City, Missouri on Sept. 1, 1949, and raised in Buffalo, New York, by a working-class family, according to an editorial in On The Issues magazine, Feinberg said her gender expression was seen as male. However, in the obituary penned by Feinberg's spouse, the transfeminist writer was referred to as "she."

Conversing about her identity in an interview, Feinberg spoke about her preference for being addressed as "she" and "her," stating: "I care which pronoun is used, but people have been disrespectful to me with the wrong pronoun and respectful with the right one. It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect."

Feinberg's widow, Minnie Bruce Pratt, a professor of Writing and Women's Studies at Syracuse University who wed Feinberg in New York and Massachusetts in 2011, said in an family obituary that Feinberg identified as "an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist." According to that obituary, Feinberg's last words were: "Remember me as a revolutionary communist."

She was. The influential "Stone Butch Blues," her debut novel which established Feinberg as an important writer in LGBT literature, won a 1994 Stonewall Book Award and was translated into a number of languages since it was first published with Firebrand Books in March 1993. Following the life and times of a fictional butch adolescent and the trials and tribulations she faces growing up in a time prior to the Stonewall riots of 1969, the story was groundbreaking at the time it went to print. Because a character in the novel, Jess Goldberg, was also a Jewish, working-class and teenage runaway, for many years the novel was believed to be autobiographical, which Feinberg later denied.

According to The Advocate, Feiberg dropped out of high school and ran away from home at 14, where she supported herself by working for a local department store in the display sign shop; however, she had officially received her diploma. Also like Goldberg, it was during this time that she entered the social life of the Buffalo gay bars which eventually led to her campaigning for the Workers World Party and the December 1974 March Against Racism in Boston. A lifelong advocate, Feinberg also was a strong activist of abortion rights.

The author of four books of non-fiction, Feinberg financed her writing by working low-paid jobs. Among her work are two volumes of journalism -- "Lavender & Red" and "Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba" -- and a stand-alone novel, "Drag King Dreams."