Felice Picano, who in the 1970s and ’80s helped usher in a golden age of gay literature as the author of groundbreaking novels and memoirs and as the publisher of dozens of books by gay writers, died on Wednesday (12) in Los Angeles. He was 81. Mr. Picano, who published 17 novels and eight volumes of memoirs, was a member of the Violet Quill, a group of seven gay male writers who met regularly in Manhattan and on Fire Island in the early 1980s to discuss their work in progress, at a time when gay literature was just entering the mainstream. Two Violet Quill members, both best-selling authors, survive him: Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance) and Edmund White (A Boy’s Own Story). If the other participants — Christopher Cox, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley and George Whitmore — aren’t as well known, it may be because all four had died of AIDS by 1990. He established Sea Horse Press in 1977 to publish the work of other gay writers. In 1981, he teamed up with two other publishers to form Gay Presses of New York. Together, he said, the presses lasted 18 years and published 78 books (including three of his own). Those that have stood the test of time include Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, Dennis Cooper’s books Safe and Closer, Brad Gooch’s collection Jailbait and Other Stories and books based on the Rev. Boyd McDonald’s Straight to Hell magazines. The companies also reissued important older works. In various memoirs, he described encounters with the authors Gore Vidal and Edward Gorey, the poet W.H. Auden, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the actor Anthony Perkins. His partner for 15 years, Robert Allen Lowe, a lawyer, succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses in 1991. Of his fellow Violet Quill members, Mr. Picano wrote in an email last month: “We shared the hope that one day any lesbian or gay teenager could go into any bookstore or library and get a book about his or her own kind. Our dream has come true!” (Full article)
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