Boston's LGBTQ+ History: Notable Boston Creatives

Sasha Alyson (1952 – )
Alyson founded Alyson Publications, later known as Alyson Books, a publishing house originally based in Boston that specialized in LGBT fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. Alyson initiated publication of the book You Can Do Something About AIDS, which earned Alyson the first Publisher's Service award from Lambda Literary. Alyson also created the publishing imprint "Alyson Wonderland" to publish children's books that depicted families with lesbian and gay parents.

Katharine Lee Bates (1859 – 1929)
Bates was an American author, poet, and social activist. She is assumed to have been in a relationship with Katharine Coman. Both were professors at Wellesley College. Bates is most famous for writing the song "America the Beautiful". She also wrote America the Dream, and From Gretna Green to Land's End, amongst other publications. 

Michael Bronski (1949 – )
Bronski has lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1971. He is currently a professor at Harvard University and is best known for his 2011 book A Queer History of the United States. He has won numerous awards for LGBTQ activism and scholarship, including the prestigious Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. Bronski has been on the frontlines for Gay rights since the '70s and has written or contributed to numerous LGBTQ+ related books and articles. See also the entry for Charley Shively.

Steve Buckley (1956 – )
Buckley is a journalist and sports writer. He previously wrote for the Boston Herald, the Westfield Evening News, and Boston Magazine as well as other publications outside the Greater Boston area. Born in Cambridge, he currently resides in Somerville and writes for The Athletic. His other achievements include: organizing the annual Cambridge event The Old Time Baseball Game, hosting the podcast Two Outs which discussed LGBTQ+ issues in sports, and authoring The Best Boston Sports Arguments and Wicked Good Year.

Edith Guerrier (1870 – 1958)
One of BPL's own, Edith Guerrier was a librarian, author, and educator. She ran the "Saturday Evening Girls" reading and writing clubs for young immigrant women out of the North End Branch Library and later became the supervisor for all BPL branches in the 1920s. She lived together with her longtime companion Edith Brown in a house in Brighton. She wrote An Independent Woman: the Autobiography of Edith Guerrier, and Wanderfolk in Wonderland a Book of Animal Fable Stories, and more.

F.O. Matthiessen (1902 – 1950)
Harvard literary critic F.O. Matthiessen and New England painter Russell Cheney embarked upon a two decade long relationship in the mid 1920s.While they never publicly disclosed their relationship, they were open about it with their close friends and wrote about it in their letters, a collection of which are available at the BPL. Matthiessen's critical works were supplemented by left wing political activism. Potentially still devastated by Cheney's death due to illness in 1945 and afraid of being victimized by the growing Red Scare in American politics, Matthiessen committed suicide in 1950. (Left: F. O. Matthiessen with Pansy Littlefield, painted by Russell Cheney, 1926)

Brian McNaught (1948 – )
McNaught served as Boston's Mayor's Liaison to the Gay and Lesbian Community from 1982 to 1984, the first such full time position in the country. While working for Bosotn, McNaught created the first city task force on AIDS. He wrote several books on the subject of LGBTQ+ life and civil rights. McNaught is considered one of the world’s leading corporate diversity consultants dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues in the workplace. BPL holds his books and government documents.

Charley Shively (1937 – 2017)
Born in Ohio, Charles Shively came to Boston via Harvard University. Shively was a Gay Liberationist, theorist, writer, and activist most famous during the height of the Gay Liberation Movement in the 1970s and '80s. He is responsible for publishing, producing, and/or writing much of the content for Boston's first Gay Liberationist journals such as Fag Rag and Lavender Vision. A friend and collaborator of author Michael Bronski, both were on the frontlines of Boston's Gay Liberation Movement. Although mostly forgotten towards the end of his life, his life as an anarchist and gay rights activist lives on. See Bronski's articles about Shively in The Boston Review and Lambda Literary

Tourmaline (1983 – )
A writer, trans-activist, and artist, Tourmaline grew up in Roxbury, a neighborhood of Boston. She is a TIME 100 Most Influential Person in the World awardee and a Guggenheim Fellow. She wrote (or contributed to) several books including The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions (preface), the picture book One Day in June, and the biography Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson, amongst others. See her oral history via Digital Commonwealth.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)
Bishop was a pulitzer prize winning poet and short-story writer. She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and died in Boston. According to the State Library of Massachusetts, "She avoided personal and confessional themes in her poetry and labels such as 'female poet' or 'lesbian poet' as she wanted to be considered based on the quality of her writing, not on her gender or sexual orientation. Her published works are available at BPL and our Special Collections.

Angelina Weld Grimké (1880 – 1958)
Grimké was a poet, playwright, and journalist born in Boston to a biracial family. She is noted for being one of the first Black American women to have a play publicly performed. Though to modern knowledge Grimké never came "out" in today's sense of the word, there is strong evidence in her writing and letters that she was lesbian or bisexual.

Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925)
A member of the Brahmin Lowell Family, Amy Lowell grew up in Brookline, attending private schools in Boston. A wealthy, well-read socialite, Lowell began her poetry career in her 30s. As an author, she was an adamant proponent of the Imagist Movement, led by Ezra Pound. Lowell published several books poetry with many of her erotic and love poems devoted to her lover and partner Ada Dwyer Russell. Lowell posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Images of the historic Lowell family home and other ephemera are available on Digital Commonwealth. BPL's Special Collections has an archive devoted to Amy Lowell's correspondence (1915 – 1919).

Paul Monette (1945 – 1995)
Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He moved to Boston as a young adult where he taught at Milton Academy. He later moved to Los Angeles with his longtime partner, Roger Horwitz, in 1977, where he became active in the city’s gay rights movement. "Frequently elegiac, Monette’s poems narrate the trauma and pain of the AIDS crisis" (Poetry Foundation). He died of complications from HIV/AIDS. Monette's influential publications can be found at BPL.

Porsha Olayiwola (1988 – )
Olayiwola earned her MFA in poetry from Emerson College and is the City of Boston's current Poet Laureate. She is the founder of the Roxbury Poetry Festival and was the 2021 Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Her book I Shimmer Sometimes Too is available at BPL. Her work examines historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas.

Michelle Tea (1971 – )
Tea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts and moved to Boston as a teenager to live with her girlfriend. She has earned awards from LAMBDA and PEN/America and is also the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Awards, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. Her many publications are available at BPL as books, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Leonard Bernstein (1918 – 1990)
Bernstein was a conductor and composer of great renown. Amongst his many accolades, he was the musical conductor for the New York Philharmonic and created the music for Broadway's West Side Story. He was also a human rights activist, protesting the Vietnam War and raising money for HIV/AIDS research and awareness. Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, later moved to Newton, attended Boston Latin School, and graduated from Harvard University. Bernstein married Felicia Montealegre. He was known (both openly and discreetly) to have relationships with men and women outside his marriage. See more photos and ephemera of Bernstein on Digital Commonwealth.

Boston Gay Men's Chorus (1982 – )
Founded in 1982, BGMC sings a wide spectrum of classical and popular music and creates social change by providing a positive, affirming image of the LGBTQ+ community. BPL hosts many of BGMC's videos, recordings, posters, and more via Digital Commonwealth.

Jonathan Knight (1968 – )
Knight is a pop singer famous for being a member of New Kids on the Block, a boy band formed in Boston. Knight was born in Boston, where he grew up. He later lived in Essex, Massachusetts. Knight was outted without his consent by an ex via the National Enquirer. Knight responded to the article, "I have lived my life very openly and have never hidden the fact that I am gay" and "Apparently the prerequisite to being a gay public figure is to appear on the cover of a magazine with the caption 'I am gay'. I apologize for not doing so if this is what was expected!"

Stephin Merritt (1965 – )
Merritt is best known for being one of the principal singers in The Magnetic Fields, a band formed in Boston. He attended high school in Massachusetts and returned to Boston after attending NYU. Merritt is lauded for his lyrics and praised for the references he makes to gay love in his music. In addition to The Magnetic Fields, Merritt is also a solo artist and published a book of poetry, 101 Two-letter Words.

Ayo Edebiri
Edebiri was born in Boston, grew up in Dorchester, and attended Boston Latin School. She is most famous for her role in the TV series The Bear, for which she won a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. See more of her work held at BPL here. She identifies as queer.

Julie Goldman
Goldman is a comedian, actress, and podcaster born and raised in Boston. She performed her first stand-up routine at age 15 at Boston's Comedy Connection. She later attended Emerson College. She is most famous for her performance on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, starring in The Big Gay Sketch Show, and co-hosting the podcast Dumb, Gay Politics. The Boston Globe has published numerous articles about Goldman and her work over the years, read them via BPL.

John Lam
Lam is a dancer who performed with the Boston Ballet from 2003 – 2024. He was a principal dancer with BB from 2014 – 2024. Other achievements include choreographing Boston Ballet's "Dance Is" and receiving positive reviews from The Boston Globe. More items from the Boston Ballet can be found via BPL's catalog.