Those Who Felt

Valentine Ackland, June Arnold, W.H. Auden, James Baldwin, Karin Boye, Lord Byron, Truman Capote, Willa Cather, Luis Cernuda, Hart Crane, Timothy Conigrave, Emily Dickinson, Hilda Doolittle, Alfred Douglas, E.M. Forster, Michel Foucault, Federico García Lorca, Jean Genet, André Gide, Radclyffe Hall, Christopher Isherwood, Derek Jarman, Selma Lagerlöf, Audre Lorde, Yukio Mishima, Oscar Moore, Harold Nicolson, Joe Orton, Marcel Proust, Manuel Puig, Frederick Rolfe, Eleanor Roosevelt, Viktoria Sackville-West, Siegfried Sassoon, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Pontus Wikner, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, and Virginia Woolf.

Lord (George Gordon) Byron

1788-1824

"Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes
Sin's a pleasure."

Lord Byron was married to a rich woman, but the marriage was a failure and he fled the England in disgust over the English society. Abroad he had affairs with both men and women.

Famous Work:

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812)
Don Juan (1818-1819)

Emily Dickinson

1830-1886

"'Till I loved
I never lived- Enough."

Emily Dickinson came from a well-off English family and was able to get a good education. She withdrew from the world when she was in her 30's and would only correspond to friends and family through letters. Her love for her to be sister-in-law Susan Gilbert is well documented in letters she sends Gilbert. 

She was publicized after her death, and not completely until 1960.

Famous Work:

Poems (1890)
Poems: Second Series (1891)
Poems: Third Series (1896)
The Single Hound (1914)

Pontus Wikner

1837-1888

Pontus Wikner was a Swedish religious writer and philosopher whose memoirs, publicized a long time after his death, revealed that he was in fact homosexual. In the memoirs he goes as far as to suggest gay marriage.

Famous Work:

Psykologiska bekännelser (his memoir)

1854-1900

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Oscar Wilde was married to a rich Scottish woman and had two kids with her. 

His most famous affair was with the young lord Alfred Douglas, which was not liked by the lord's father who in public called Wilde a sodomite. Wilde, encouraged by his young lover took the father to court, but he lost the case, and would subsequentually be sentenced to two years in work-camp. 

The experiences in the work-camp along with the shame that the society casted over him would drive him to exile in France, where he lived the rest of his life.

Famous Work:

The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891)
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Selma Lagerlöf

1858-1940

Selma Lagerlöf is one of Swedish Literature most influent authors, and Nobel Prize winner (1909). 

She was born in Mårbacka, in the south west of Sweden. Between the years 1885 to 1895, she was teaching in a school in Landskrona. It's here she allegedly started to find her first female lovers. Her sexuality is contested, and was totally unknown while she were alive. However she never got married, and did not have any children of her own. It was in her letters to one of her mistresses that revealed her love for women. 

She died living in Mårbacka in the same house where she once grew up, which she had had to buy back, after her father sold it to finance his alcoholism.

Famous Work:

Gösta Berglings saga (1891)
En Herrgårdssägen (1899)
Jerusalem (1901-1902)
Nils Holgerssons underbara resa (1906-1907)

Frederick Rolfe

1860-1913

Frederick Rolfe is a British author that wrote under the pseudonym Baron Corvo. He was converted to Catholicism, and wanted to become a priest, but failed because of his homosexuality. Most of his work is religious.

Famous Work:

Stories Toto Told Me (1904)
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole (1934)

André Gide

1869-1951

"To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom."

André Gide was born in 1869 in a religious protestant family. He marries his cousin, but would later in life live separate from her. He has written two important texts about homosexuality. 

In Carydon, publicized anonymously, he tries to convince the world that homosexuality is natural, because of the fact that exists in other species, and he also claims humoristically that early male homosexuality is the best way to protect the virginity of the girls. 

In Si le grain ne meurt he tells about how Oscar Wilde introduced him to a Arab musician that he fell in love with.

Famous Work:

L'Immortaliste (1902)
Si le grain ne meurt (1920-21)
Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1925)
Les Caves du Vatican (1927)

1870- 1945

Alfred Douglas was British poet, but probably most famous for his affair with Oscar Wilde.

He was born in 1870 as the son of John Sholto Douglas, the 8th. Marquis of Queensberry. He would grow up in the family estate, which later would be sold after his parents divorce. 

He would meet Oscar Wilde when he was 21 year old, but they would not commence their affair until half of year later after he had seen one of Wilde's theatre pieces. The affair was quite short, and only six month later they would break apart. During Wilde's trials Douglas would leave for France to avoid witnessing. When Wilde was released they would reunite in France, but they would not be lovers anymore. Later he would denounce Wilde as a pervert. His interest in men would however continue, and he would be in the same situation as Wilde, when he in his fifties fell in love with a young man.

In 1902 to he would marry, and got a child, but his wife left him in 1913. He would be in legal trouble most of the time, and would be jailed after accusing Winston Churchill for taking part in a murder.

He started to write poetry while attending Oxford University, and got two poems publicized, one of these poems would end with classical words: "The love that not dare speak its name". His first book of poems was published first in French and when translated to English it became a huge success. While he was imprisoned he would write In Excelsis (1924). He would visit the famous Eiffel Tower resturant in London, where lots of the important cultural personas of the time was regulars, such as Ronald Firband and the Sitwells.

He died in 1945.

Famous Work:

Poems (1896) 
Oscar Wilde and Myself (1914)
In Excelsis (1924) 
The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas (1929)

Marcel Proust

1871-1922

"There was nothing abnormal about it when homosexuality was the norm"

Marcel Proust's life work À la recherche du temps perdu is considered to be one of the big achievement in World Literature, but it also one of the most important early work when it comes portraying homosexuality; both gay and lesbian love. Much of the homosexual parts is autobiographical, although the narrator never exposes his own homosexuality. 

Proust had asthma which forced him withdraw from the world in long periods, and only come out during the nights. Although this forced solitude he had many lovers, and some of them lived with him.

Famous Work:

À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927)

Willa Cather

1873-1947

American journalist, novelist, poet, and Pulitzer Prize Winner (1923).

Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1873. At the age of nine the family moved to Nebraska, where she would grow up. She enroled at the University of Nebraska as William Cather, her twin, and would graduate in 1895. She later moved to New York, where she would meet her life companion Edith Lewis, which she would live with for 40 years. 

She would never openly write about homosexuality in any form, but much of her work has homosexual undertones, such as Death Comes for the Archbishop.

She died in 1947.

Famous Work:

Alexander's Bridge (1912)
One of Ours (1922) 
My Mortal Enemy (1926)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

Gertrude Stein

1874- 1946

"In America, everybody is [equal], but some are more than others"

Gertrude Stein was an American writer and poet.

She was born in States in 1874, in a well-off family. Both her mother and father died early, which meant she and her younger siblings was to live with the older brother Michael. 

Later in life she moved to Paris with her brother Leo. Leo would however return to USA after a rift with Gertrude Stein. During a short trip back USA she meets her life companion the American writer Alice B. Toklas, who would join her in Paris. They lived together in Paris, except for some years during the war, and Stein would also die there. 

Stein was not as important for her writing as for her influence other artists. She was friends with Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and many of the other important painters and writers living in Paris at the time.

She died in 1946 after a period of ill-health.

Famous Work:

Three Lives (1908)
Tender Bottoms (1915)
The Making of Americans (1925)
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

Alice B. Toklas

1877-1967

"I am staying on here alone now."

The life companion of Gertrude Stein, publisher of many of Stein's novels, and also writer in her own name. When Gertrude Stein died she would carry on with publishing the last of Stein's work. 

Her life with Gertrude Stein is described in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and her life after Stein's death in Staying on Alone, which is an collection of her letters. When Stein died she had to leave their joined home for many years and settle down in a smaller apartment.

Toklas died in 1967.

Famous Work:

The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book (1954)
What Is Remembered (1963)

The Author's Choice:

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 1933
Staying on Alone, ed. Edward Burns, 1973

E.M. Forster

1879- 1970

"What the public really loathes in homosexuality is not the thing itself but having to think about it"

E.M. Forster was a member of the Bloomsbury group as Virginia Woolf. 

It is known that he had a relationship with an English policeman during a long time of his life. However he never outed his sexuality, even if it was very well-known in homosexual circles, and his choice was criticized by the gay-activists of the time.  

He would write Maurice early in his life, but would not let it be publicized until after his death.

Famous Work:

Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
A Room with a View (1908)
Howards End (1910)
Maurice (1971)

Virginia Woolf

1882- 1941

"Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"

Virginia Woolf was a part of the influential Bloomsbury Group. She is famous for stream-of-conscious and the poetic prose in her work. 

She was married to the writer Leonard Woolf, but she had well documented romance with her friend Victoria Sackville-West, and it is her that the novel Orlando is loosely based upon. 

She committed suicide by drowning herself.

Famous Work:

The Voyage Out (1915)
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Orlando (1928)

Radclyffe Hall

1883- 1943

Radclyffe Hall is foremost famous for writing the the first lesbian book Well of Loneliness, but she did write other novels and was also a poet. 

She had first a relationship with a twenty year older woman, then fell in love with the woman's cousin Una Troubridge, who later would leave her husband for Hall. Together as a couple they were quite known, even before Well of Loneliness came out. 

The Well of Loneliness would make Hall notorious. When it was publicized, in 1923, and was banned. Many of the writers, such as E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, spoke upin favor of the book.

Famous Work:

The Forge (1924)
The Unlit Lamp (1924)
Adam's Breed (1926)
Well of Loneliness (1928)

Eleanor Roosevelt

1884- 1962

Eleanor Roosevelt is an American First Lady and writer.

 
She was born in New York City in 1884. Her parents died early. In 1905 she marries Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was her distant cousin. She would after that be a faithful supporter of her husband's political career, and would be his primary advisor. They early found out that FDR had polio, but they decided to conceal this. In 1932 she compaigns extensively for her husband, and would become First lady in 1933. She would not however be a quiet First Lady but always campaigning, writing books, and working for progressive politic causes. In 1945 FDR finally dies, but ER continue her political work all through the late 40's, 50's and the early 60's. 

Her sexuality is hotly contested, but there is much evidence to suggest a relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and the journalist Lorena Hickok. She met Hickok in 1932 when Hickok covers the future First Lady in the election. When FDR got elected Hickok joined his staff to alledgelly be close to Eleanor Roosevelt. They would correspond through letter extensively all through the years, but only fragments has survived. There were of course rumours but the media kept it quiet, as they did with FDR's sickness and his own unfaithfulness.

Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962.

Famous Work:

You Learn By Living (1960)

Hilda Doolittle

1886-1961

"I go where I love and where I am loved."

Hilda Doolittle was an American poet and part of the Imagist movement. 

She was engaged to Ezra Pound, and she married Richard Aldington. When the marriage with Aldington failed she started an relationship with a woman. 

Her work portraying her love for women did was not published until after her death.

Famous Work:

Palimpsest (1926)
Hedylus (1928)
Bid Me to Live (1960)
Hermione (1981)

Harold Nicolson

1886-1968

Harold Nicolson was an English diplomat, writer, and biographer.

He was born as a son of a nobleman, and would study both in in Berkley and Oxford. Finished with his studies he followed in his father's footsteps and became a diplomate. In 1913 he married Viktoria Sackville-West. They would stay married although both husband and wife had lovers, often of the same sex.

After resigning as a diplomate in 1923 he started his literary career, and would also enter politics as National Labour member of the Parlament. 

Famous Work:

Paul Verlaine (1921)
Some People (1927)
Journey to Java (1960)
Sainte-Beauve (1981)

Siegfried Sassoon

1886-1967

Siegfried Sasson was a British poet and novelist.

Siegfried Sasson was born in 1886. His father died when he was 9 year old. He went to Marlborough and then continued to Cambridge. He would not however stay around long enough for a degree, and would leave Cambridge to become a sportsman. 1914 he would enlist to the army, and would soon be send to the war. 

He would start to write early, but before the war his poems would not be of a very high quality. After the war he started to become very good, especially after his brother and a  friend are killed, he started to write about the war. He continued doing this after the war. He would for years write his autobiography. 

He marries in 1933 and they would have two children, but they divorced in 1945. He died in 1967.

Famous Work:

Counter-Attack and Other Poems 
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930)
Sherston's Progress (1936) 
The Old Century and Seven More Years (1938)

Victoria Sackville-West

1892-1962

"We have tasted space and freedom, frontiers falling as we went,
Now with narrow bonds and limits, never could we be content"

Victoria Sackville-West was a British poet, novelist, and biographer. 

She was born in 1892 as daugher of a nobleman. Married her husband Harold Nicolson in 1913, and would travel with him to Persia. She had a string of female lovers, and also left for Paris with a married woman, both Nicolson and the woman's husband travelled to Paris and persuaded them to come back. 

The most famous love affair Sackville-West had was with Virginia Woolf, whom she met in 1922, a relationship that they both contributed from.

She died in 1962.

Famous Work:

The Land (1926)
The Edwardians (1930)
All Passion Spent (1931)
Pepita (1937)

Sylvia Townsend Warner

1893-1978

"Anticipation of pleasure is a pleasure in itself."

Sylvia Townsend Warner was born in 1893, in Devonshire, England, as the daugther a schoolmaster. In 1917 she left for London and worked in musicology. However she would continue writing and her first novel Lolly Willowes came out in 1926. 

1927 was an important year for Townsend, firstly her second novel Mr Fortune's Maggot would be published and secondly she would meet Valentine Ackland. In 1930 they moved in together. They both joined the Communist Party in 1935. Finally they move to From Vauchurch in 1937, which would be their home until they died.  In 1969 Ackland died and left a mourning Townsend. 

However she would survive for 9 years, but would join her love in 1978.

Famous Work:

Lolly Willowes (1925)
Mr. Fortune's Maggot (1927)
The Corner That Held Them (1948)
Kingdoms of Elfin (1977)

Federico García Lorca

1898 -1936

Garcia Lorca is Spain's most famous writer after Cervantes. Belonged to the famous Generation of '27, a important Spanish literary movement. He wrote mostly plays and poems. 

Most of his plays does have homosexual themes, but El Publico (1930) is the only play directly handling homosexuality. El Publico is also the last of the Lorca plays that was publicized, as it was seen to be too 'modern' to be brought up on stage. After his death his family also chose to withhold the play from the world. It was not until a critical essay about the play was publicized that the family was persuaded to let the play be printed. 

García Lorca was in love with Salvador Dalí, as far anyone can tell there were not a sexual relationship between them. Dalí left him however for Paris and fell in love with a married woman there. Lorca continued dating famous and not so famous men. 

He was murded during the first day of the Spanish Civil War, because he was one of the front figures of the republic, but also because he was homosexual.

Famous Work:

Bodas de Sangre (1933)
Yerma (1935)
La casa de Bernarda Alba (1936)
Un poeta en Nueva Yorka (1940)

Hart Crane

1899 -1932

Hart Crane is an American poet which is famous for his hard work and his celebrating of the modern urban lifestyle. 

During his childhood he was forced to live with his grandmother until his parents divorced. He then dropped out of high-school and went to New York to become a poet. But he could not support himself by being that in the beginning and his father helped him, though the father didn't really liked the fact that Hart Crane was a poet. In 1921 he finally broke with his father and started to really concentrate on his poetry. Unfortunately then he had started to become alcoholic, and his male affairs didn't contribute anything good, rather taking him further down in the alcoholism. He had many affairs with sailors. 

In 1932 he went to Mexico to write. On his way back to the States, he jumped overboard and assumed to have drowned.

Famous Work:

White Buildings (1926)
The Bridge (1930)

1900- 1941

Karin Boye is one of Sweden's most acknowledge poets, she also wrote novels and short-stories. Her bisexuality is something that is showing in all her work. 

She was married to man, but the marriage was a failure and they divorce in 1932, and after that she lived with a German friend in Stockholm. She was thorned by depressions and tried to seek help for it in Germany, but it did not help. 

1941 she was found dead in the woods near Allingsås in Sweden.

Famous Work:

Callocain

Luis Cernuda

1902 -1963

Luis Cernuda was a Spanish poet and critic.

He was born in Seville in 1902. Studied law before he decided to start to write. He became part of the important Spanish literary group Generation of '27, like Federico Garcia Lorca, and next to Garcia Lorca the most famous in the group.

After the Spanish Civil War he went into exile.

He died in 1963 in Mexico City.

Famous Work:

(1964)

Christopher Isherwood

1904 -1986

"A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary"

Christopher Isherwood is an English-American writer, of mostly autobiographical nature.

He was born in England in an upper middle class family in 1904. With economical assistance from his uncle he went to live in Germany in the early 1930th, and left before Hitler came to power. His experiences there would be the background material for The Berlin Stories (that would become the famous musical Cabaret). Isherwood tried to conceal his homosexuality in many of the early novels, especially The Berlin Stories and Lions and Shadows, that both are semi autobiographical. 

Later in life he lived openly together with the artist Don Bachardy in Santa Monica, California. 

In Christopher and His Kind (1976) he finally told the world about his homosexuality. This autobiography tells the true story about his life between 1929-39, which he portrayed in some length in Lions and Shadows and The Berlin Stories, and gives the true story behind the characters he had tampered with.

Famous Work:

Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
Prater Violet (1945)
Down There on a Visit (1962)
A Single Man (1964)

Valentine Ackland

1906-1969

Valentine Ackland was born in 1906. 

She got her education in a convent school. Also married to a man for a short time. Then she met Sylvia Townsend Warner and they would be together for the rest of their lives. She would co-work with Warner and they wrote Whether A Dove or Seagull (1933) together. She also worked as a journalist and wrote for several newspapers, such as Daily Chronicle and New Statesman. 

As communist by heart she was politically active and were strongly opposed to the British goverment’s inaction during the Spanish Civil War. In 1936 Ackland and Warner would leave for Spain and joined the British medical unit who supported the Republican Army.

During the 40's she had an affair with an American woman, but would finally return to Warner. 

In 1949 she would write For Sylvia, An Honest Account (published in 1985), where she writes about her life together with Sylvia Townsend Warner. 

Mary Valentine Ackland died in 1969 after a long struggle with breast cancer.

Famous Work:

For Sylvia, An Honest Account (1985)

W.H. Auden

1907 -1973

"There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, "Did you get an erection?" If the answer is "Yes" from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic."

WH Auden is an English born writer and one of the most influential poets in English literature. 

He married Thomas Manns daughter Erica Mann, after his friend Christopher Isherwood suggested it, so she could escape Nazi Germany. 

In the late 1930th he moved to the States and met Chester Kallman, who he would live with the rest of his life.

Famous Work:

The Shield of Achilles (1955)
Homage to Clio (1960)
About the House (1965)
City Without Walls (1969)

Jean Genet

1910- 1986

"The world is full of whores. What it really needs is a good bookkeeper."

Jean Genet was born in Paris in poor surroundings in 1910. His mother was a sexworker and abandoned Genet a short while after his birth. Instead he grew up in the country, with his fostering parents. He was caught stealing at the age of ten and for ten years after that he would be a thief and male prostitute. 

His novels was first accused of pornographic material, but then revised to existentialism. Many of the novels are autobiographical. The underworld is a theme he comes back to time after time. He was friend with many of the important French writers during this time, such as Cocteau, Gide and Sartre.

He died in 1986.

Famous Work:

Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1944)
Le Journal du voleur (1949)
Le Miracle de la rose (1951)
Pompes Funèbres (1953)

Tennessee Williams

1911- 1983

"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains!"

Tennessee Williams was a Pulitzer Prize Winner and acknowledge play writer. His most famous work is A Streetcar Named Desire, which is considered one of the best plays written in USA ever. 

He had many relationships, the most important of these seem to be with Frank Merlo, who he lived with for a great part of their lives. They broke up for a period while Frank was sick, but reconciled and Williams attended his deathbed. After reading a bibliography of himself, where they forget to mention his sexuality, he decides to write his Memoirs (1972, 1975) where he gives his truth about his life, his friends and his lovers.

He dies in 1983.

Famous Work:

The Glass Menagerie (1945)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1954)
Baby Doll (1956)

James Baldwin

1924-1987

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be."

James Baldwin was a Black American writer famous for portraying the Afro-American society, and fighting against the racial oppression still so blatant during his most productive years. 

Baldwin moves to Paris where he would spend most of his life, and finally die. He was never open homosexual, but it is known that he had alledgelly many male affairs. Only two of his novels are about homosexuality: Giovanni's room and Another Country.

James Baldwin died in 1987.

Famous Work:

Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
Giovanni's Room (1956)
Another Country (1962)
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968)

Truman Capote

1924-1984

"I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius. Of course, I could be all four of these dubious things and still be a saint. But I shonuf ain't no saint yet, nawsuh."

American writer. 

He was born Truman Pearson in 1924, but would take his step father's name. 

During many years he was the sweetheart of the celebrities, and good friends with many of the female starlets. 1966 he held The Black and White Ball, one of the most legendary parties in modern history, in the honor of one of his female celebrities friends. In the middle of the 70th he would however publicize the novel "La Cote Basque". This novel would upset many of his friends and liaisons who found themselves ridiculed in the book and he was put out in the cold, and they never really accept him back. He also had a long on-going feud with the author Gore Vidal, one of his most dangerous competitors when it came to attract the readers. In 1984 Vidal sued Capote after an interview Capote did for Playgirl. Capote would die before the case got to court.

Truman Capote was ridden with bad health, overweight, and died in 1984.

Famous Work:

Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)
The Grass Harp (1951)
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958)
In Cold Blood (1966)

Yukio Mishima

1925- 1970

"Human beings... they go on being born and dying, dying and being born. It's kinda boring, isn't it?"

Yukio Mishima was married and had two children, but he had affairs with men, and according to his biographer he was totally homosexual. He was fascinated by death and many of his books are of this theme.

He would commit suicide in 1970.

Famous Work:

Confessions of a Mask (1948)
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956)
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1963)
The Sea of Fertility (1970)

June Arnold

1926- 1982

June Arnold is an American writer and publisher. 

Born in South Carolina in 1926; she went both to Vassar College and Rice University. She got married and had four children, but would divorce her husband and move to Greenwich Village. There she wrote her first novel. She would in the 70's move to Vermont where she founded Daughters Inc together with her lover Parke Bowman. She would be compared with Virginia Woolf.

Born in South Carolina and raised in Houston, Arnold returned to Texas after studying at Vassar College. Back in Texas, she earned degrees at Rice University, married, had four children. After a divorce, she moved to Greenwich Village where she wrote her first novel, Applesauce.

She died in 1982.

Famous Work:

Applesauce (1967)
The Cook and the Carpenter 
Sister Gin (1975)

Michel Foucault

1926- 1984

"Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism."

Famous French scholar and philosopher but also a writer in his own name. His academic theories would change most of the academic field as we know it today. He is especially important when it comes to his epic mapping of the sexuality, which he publicized in three volumes. He had planned for more volumes, because he died in AIDS-related complications in June 1984.

Famous Work:

Discipline and Punish (19)
History of Sexuality (1978)

Manuel Puig

1932- 1987

"Outside of this cell we may have our oppressors, yes, but not inside. Here no one oppresses the other. The only thing that seem to disturb me... because I'm exhausted, or conditioned, or perverted... is that someone wants to be nice to me, without asking anything back for it."

Manuel Puig is an important Latin-American gaywriter. 

He was born in Argentina, but moved to Rome to study film direction. In 1962 he stopped working as assistant director and started to write books. 

Two of his books became banned in Argentina: El beso de la mujer Arana and Buenos Aires. 

He later moved to New York. He died in AIDS-related complications in 1987.

Famous Work:

La traición de Rita Hayworth (1967)
Heartbreak Tango
El beso de la mujer Araña (1976)
The Buenos Aires Affair

Joe Orton

1933- 1967

"Mike: I'm to be at Kings Cross station at eleven. I'm meeting a man in the toilet.
Joyce: You always go to such interesting places."

Joe Orton was a British playwriter famous for his humoristic dramas, which always was criticizing the society in one way or another. 

His boyfriend Kenneth Halliwell was also a writer and in the beginning they wrote plays together, but it was by his own Joe Orton would be famous. 

The relationship between Halliwell and Orton was alledgelly quite stormy, and Halliwell was depressed in the end. In the end Halliwell stabbed Orton to death and then committed suicide.

Famous Work:

Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964)
The Ruffian on the Stair (1964)
Loot (1966)
What the Butler Saw (1964)

Audre Lorde

1934- 1994

"It is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes."

Audre Lorde was an American poet, essayist and feminist.

Audrey Lorde was born in 1934 in NYC, USA. Her family was a laborer family, with her mother being a West Indian emigrant from Grenada. Early she dropped the y in her name, and became Audre Lorde. She studied a year at the National University of Mexico. After that she returned to NYC and attended Hunter College.

While studying she kept her sexuality secret, but started to explore the lesbian barscene. She felt alienated by the butch-femme-roles that was promenant in the lesbian community during this time. In 1970 she came out with the poem "Martha". She was married between 1962-1970 with a white lawyer and had two children. She would meet Frances Clayton in early 1970's who she would live together for 19 years, and who would help her raising her children.

She would fight against the oppression of the black people, by co-founding the Kitchen Table, which specialized on colored women. She also faught the injustice in South Africa, and also took part in the first national march for gay and lesbians, in 1979.

She got poems already publicized in high-school. Her first poetry book was released in 1968, and got praise from contemporary poets. The same year she got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and also became the poet in resident at Tougaloo College in Mississippi which gave her the chance to concentrate on writing. Her second book would come two years later. In the late 1970's she became friends with Adrienne Rich, who would introduce her work to white readers. She would go on to releasing over a dozen poetry books and six prosebooks. Most of her later work would be quite open about her sexuality.

Aurde Lorde died in 1992 

Famous Work:

From a Land Where Other People Live (1973)
The Cancer Journals (1980)
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)
A Burst of Light (1988)

Derek Jarman

1942- 1994

"A personal mythology recurs in my writing, much the same way poppy wreaths have crept into my films. For me archeology has become obsessive, for the 'experts' my sexuality is a confusion. All information received should make us inverts sad. But before I finish I intend to celebrate our corner of Paradise, the part of the garden the Lord forgot to mention."

Derek Jarman was a famed painter, theatre designer, film-maker and writer. 

He was born in 1942, in a military family. The family moved around a lot when Jarman was young. He was always quite open about his sexuality, and would also come open about his AIDS illness.

His most famous films include Edward II (1991), Wittgenstein (1993) and the masterpiece Caravaggio (1989).  His later films Blue and The Garden would be much about AIDS, and the way that society is dealing with homosexuality and death.

In At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament he mapped out his life as a queer person but also as a PWA.  In Modern Nature he would describe the first year of sickness, his own private joy his garden and the making of his film The Garden. In the book his companion HB is very prominent.

He died in 1994.

Famous Work:

Dancing Ledge (1984)
The Last of England (1987)
Modern Nature (1991)
At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament (1992)

Timothy Conigrave

1959- 1994

"Language is power"

Timothy Conigrave was an Australian actor, playwriter, memoirist and gay activist. 

Conigrave was born in Melbourne in 1959. After finishing a science degree at Monash University, he continued to NIDA (National Insitute of Dramatic Arts, which Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman also attended) in Sydney. He was foremost an actor, but he would also write three plays, and the memoir Holding the Man, which would become one of the most sold gay and lesbian themed books ever in Australia. All his plays were published after his death, but were mostly written in early 90's. He also worked for the AIDS Council of New South Wales (ACON).

He met his life partner John Caleo already in high-school, and they stay together while both attending university in Melbourne. They break up while Conigrave attends NIDA, but they settle down together in Sydney after he is finished. While working on a theatre project about AIDS Conigrave decided to take an HIV test. Both Conigrave and Caleo found out that they have AIDS, and Conigrave was to see his partner of 15 years fade away, while battling the virus himself. 

Conigrave would finally die in 1994, shortly after finalizing Holding the Man. 

Famous Work:

Holding the Man (1994)
Thieving Boy (1997)
Like Stars in My Hands (1997)

Oscar Moore

1960- 1996

English journalist and writer.

He is most famous for A Matter of Life and Sex, which is about a man who dies in AIDS. He also wrote PWA where he describes life for a Person With Aids. Between be 1994-1996 he wrote a culomn in The Guardian about AIDS.

He would die in 1996. In his memory The Oscar Moore Foundation was established in 1997 as a charitable screen-writing trust administered by Screen International, where he once was the editor-in-chief. 

Famous Work:

A Matter of Life and Sex (1991)
PWA (1993)