![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Felice Picano (born February 22, 1944)
Feb. 22nd, 2015 10:20 am
Felice Picano (born February 22, 1944) is an American writer. He graduated cum laude from Queens College in 1964 with English department honors. He founded SeaHorse Press in 1977, and The Gay Presses of New York in 1981 with Terry Helbing and Larry Mitchell; he was Editor-in-Chief there. He was an editor and writer for The Advocate, Blueboy, Mandate, Gaysweek, and Christopher Street. He was the Books Editor of The New York Native. At The Los Angeles Examiner, San Francisco Examiner, New York Native, Harvard Lesbian & Gay Review and the Lamdba Book Report, he was a culture reviewer. He has also written for OUT and OUT Traveller. With Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Edmund White, Christopher Cox, and George Whitmore, he founded The Violet Quill considered to be the pathbreaking gay male literary nucleus of the 20th Century. (Picture: Felice Picano, portrait by Christopher Oakley)In his memoir Men Who Loved Me, he describes his close friendship with the poet W. H. Auden. In his later memoir/history, Art & Sex in Greenwich Village, he writes about contacts with Gore Vidal, James Purdy, Charles Henri Ford, Edward Gorey, Robert Mapplethorpe and many contemporary and younger authors.
Among those who Picano introduced to the public via his publishing companies were Dennis Cooper, Harvey Fierstein, Jane Chambers, Brad Gooch, Robert Gluck, Doric Wilson, and Gavin Dillard. Several of his novels have been national and international best-sellers, and they have been translated into fifteen languages.
A long time resident of Manhattan and Fire Island Pines, Picano has resided for periods of time in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, England, and Berlin, Germany. He now lives in West Hollywood, CA.
( Read more... )
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felice_Picano
The cover blurb from Edmund White calling Like People in History a “gay Gone with the Wind” is a bit hyperbolic, but this is one of my all-time favorite gay novels. Sweeping from the late 50’s through the early 90’s, it is the story of two gay cousins and their dysfunctional but loving friendship. With scenes at Woodstock to Fire Island in its 70’s heyday to ACT UP demonstrations, this book and its characters follow the development of gay culture from the closet of the 50’s/60’s through the hedonistic early days of freedom and pride through the horror of the AIDS plague. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and when you finish it, it will continue to resonate in your mind long after. A masterpiece from one of the community’s greatest writers. --Greg Herren
Felice Picano pretty much tops every writer´s (and reader´s) list of favorite gay authors, myself included. Ambidextrous, the first of five of Picano´s noted memoirs, was also the first coming out book I read that was as unapologetic as it was zany and sexy. It offers a slice of life completely different from my own, yet one I could wholly relate to. But it´s Picano´s style and flair that really stand out here, making this the one book I read in my twenties that grabbed me and shook me and made me want to become a writer myself. Fortunately, I´ve been able to tell that face-to-face with the author himself - numerous times now. --Rob Rosen
If you want to learn what gay men do in bed, The Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein & Felice Picano is the book. (Although I prefer the illustrations in The Gay Kama Sutra – but sadly, it’s OOP.) If you want to see it in action – watch gay porn! --Cat Grant( Felice Picano, 1985, by Robert Giard )
Further Readings:
True Stories, Portraits from my past by Felice PicanoPaperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions (March 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0984470778
ISBN-13: 978-0984470778
Amazon: True Stories, Portraits from my past
From author Felice Picano, co-founder of the path breaking Violet Quill Club, comes a new collection of memoirs, many of which have never appeared in print. Picano presents sweet and sometimes controversial anecdotes of his precocious childhood, odd, funny, and often disturbing encounters from before he found his calling as a writer and later as one of the first GLBT publishers. Throughout are his delightful encounters and surprising relationships with the one-of-a-kind and the famous-including Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Charles Henri Ford, Bette Midler, and Diana Vreeland
More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices
More Spotlights at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels
More Rainbow Awards at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, Rainbow Awards/2011
Jorge Luis Flores Sánchez (born February 22, 1974), better known as Nina Flowers, is a Puerto Rican drag queen, DJ, activist, professional make-up artist, and reality television personality who has been performing since 1993. Flowers and his partner, Antonio Purcell de Ogenio, presently reside in Denver, Colorado.
Flowers became a cast member on Logo's popular reality series, RuPaul's Drag Race, which premiered on the network in February 2009. Flowers finished in second place and won the Miss Congeniality award during the first season's reunion special. The publicity generated by his participation on the show brought many new opportunities to perform at various national and international LGBT events including Denver Pride, San Juan Pride, Chicago Pride and Vancouver Pride. Besides his participation on RuPaul's Drag Race, Flowers (along with season two contestant Jessica Wild) has performed on the popular Puerto Rican television program Objetivo Fama, which airs throughout the United States and Latin America.
Clinton Kelly (born February 22, 1969) is an American fashion consultant and media personality best known for his role as co-host on What Not to Wear, a reality program that features fashion makeovers. He shares on-air duties with Stacy London. Kelly started his career as a freelance writer for several fashion magazines. Although he still continues to write, he has since expanded into fashion consulting and designing. In 2011 Kelly joined the cast of ABC's daytime cooking show The Chew. In 2009, he married Damon Bayles and they currently live in Connecticut. Clinton Kelly is currently estimated to have a net worth of $2 million. (P: 
Kelly was born in Panama City, Panama, of Irish and Italian ancestry, and raised in Port Jefferson Station, Long Island, New York. He graduated from Comsewogue High School in 1987. He attended Boston College and graduated with a degree in communications in 1991; he was president of Boston College's University Chorale. After college, he attained his master's degree in journalism, specializing in magazine publishing, from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1993.
Edith Wynne Matthison (November 23, 1875 – September 23, 1955) was an Anglo-American stage actress who also appeared in two silent films.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work. The poet Richard Wilbur asserted, "She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century." (P: 
Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Jane Bowles, born in New York City on February 22, 1917, spent her life examining lesbian identity with an honest and sardonic wit. In 1934, on a ship returning from Switzerland, Bowles met the French author Celine, whose work she had been studying, and she suddenly decided that "I am a writer." Her first novel, La Phaeton Hypocrite, a parody of the Phaeton myth, was privately printed. Although admired by her mother, Bowles regarded the novel, no copy of which survives, as a childish exercise. (Picture: Jane Bowles by Carl Van Vechten)
Paul Frederic Bowles (December 30, 1910 – November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris in the 1930s. He studied music with Aaron Copland, and in New York wrote music for various theatrical productions, as well as other compositions. He achieved critical and popular success with the publication in 1949 of his first novel 
Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Aiden Shaw (born Aiden Finbar Brady, 22 February 1966, Harrow, Middlesex, United Kingdom) is a British author, musician, model and former gay porn star.
Richard Greenberg (born February 22, 1958) is an American playwright and television writer known for his subversively humorous depictions of middle-class American life. He has had more than 25 plays premiere on and off-broadway in New York City and eight at Los Angeles' South Coast Repertory Theatre, including The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, and Hurrah at Last.
(Arthur William) Douglas Cooper, who also published as Douglas Lord (20 February 1911 – 1 April 1984) was a British art historian, art critic and art collector. He mainly collected Cubist works.
Sir John Patrick Richardson, KBE, FBA (born 22 February, 1924 in London) is a British art historian and Picasso biographer. Richardson has also worked as an industrial designer and as a reviewer for The New Observer. He moved to southern France (Provence) in 1952 where he became friends with Picasso, Léger and de Staël. In 1960, he moved back to New York and organized a nine-gallery Picasso retrospective. Christie's then appointed him to open their US office, which he ran for the next nine years. In 1973 he joined New York gallery M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., as Vice President in charge of 19th and 20th-century painting, and later became Managing Director of Artemis, a mutual fund specializing in works of art.
Karla Jay (born February 22, 1947) is a professor of English and the director of the Women's and Gender Studies program at Pace University. A pioneer in the field of lesbian and gay studies, she is widely published.
Peter Hujar probably met Joseph Raffael (born February 22, 1933) at San Remo, a mixed queer/artist’s bar near Cooper Union. Later Raffael changed the spelling of his name by dropping the final ‘e.’ 
Paul Thek (November 2, 1933 - August 10, 1988) was an American painter and, later, sculptor and installation artist. Born in Brooklyn, he studied locally, at the Art Students League and the Pratt Institute. In 1951 he entered the Cooper Union. (Unknown, Untitled (Paul Thek leaning on tree) 1955, Vintage black and white photograph, 4.75 x 3.25 in., Collection of Peter Harvey L2012.2.1 Photographic references: Paul Thek and His Circle in the 1950s, April 12 - July 7, 2013, Co-curated by Jonathan David Katz and Peter Harvey)
Paul Thek met set designer Peter Harvey (born January 2, 1933) in Miami Beach in 1954. He had been supporting himself as a hustler while developing his art. Wilbur Pippin, a friend, introduced Thek and Harvey to the renowned mid-century photographer George Platt Lynes. (P: Paul Thek (1933-1988), Untitled (Peter Harvey), 1955, Digital enlargement, 13.5 x 8.8 in., Collection of Peter Harvey, L2013.10.5)
Peter Hujar (October 11, 1934 – November 26, 1987) was an American photographer known for his black and white portraits. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, United States. Hujar later moved to Manhattan to work in the magazine, advertising, and fashion industries. His subjects also consisted of farm animals and nudes. His most famous photograph is Candy Darling on Her Deathbed which was later used by the group Antony and the Johnsons as cover for their album I Am a Bird Now. (P: Peter Hujar, Young Peter Hujar, n.d., Gelatin silver print, 9.5 x 7.5 in., Copyright 1987 The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, L2013.01.13. Photographic references: Paul Thek and His Circle in the 1950s, April 12 - July 7, 2013, Co-curated by Jonathan David Katz and Peter Harvey, 