AILSA CHANG, HOST:
We want to close out this hour remembering a trailblazing writer. Felice Picano died last week at the age of 81. Picano was openly gay at a time when that could mean facing condemnation, discrimination and physical violence. He wrote eight volumes of memoirs and 17 novels, and he founded SeaHorse Press, one of the country's first publishers focused on LGBT writers.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
One of Picano's best-known novels was "The Lure." Published in 1979, the psychological thriller explored gay life and sexuality at a time when many mainstream writers steered clear of the topic. Picano said it was the first gay-themed book to be featured in the Book of the Month club.
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MICHAEL DENNENY: Well, I think the first generation of really openly gay writers in the '70s - people like Ed White, Andrew Holleran, Larry Kramer, Felice Picano - they were the first people to come out publicly and to risk their careers doing it.
KELLY: In 1987, Michael Denneny, an author and editor who championed LGBT writers spoke to NPR.
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DENNENY: And when the second generation of writers came along, it was a much more accepted thing. I mean, the novels didn't have to be as political. Rather than being about gay life, they were about life as it was experienced by a gay man.
CHANG: Douglas Sadownick is an author and psychotherapist. He and Picano first bonded over writing when Sadownick asked him to review one of his manuscripts. They were friends for over 30 years.
DOUGLAS SADOWNICK: He was very caring. He wanted gay people to be healthy, to be well. People thought he was a, you know, tough cookie, but he only was that way if you thought you were, you know, being fake or something. So he was a person who cared for the world.
CHANG: Picano spoke to NPR on December 1, 1995, World AIDS Day. He described finding an invitation list from a huge birthday party bash 10 years earlier. And for him, the names were a memorial to the devastation of the AIDS epidemic.
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FELICE PICANO: And I went down the list. There was one person who I could not account for his - where he is at all. And of everybody else on the list, they were all dead. So 74 names. It wasn't just authors and famous people. It was my, you know, attorney. It was the guy who sold me my newspapers every day. It was my barber. This affected everybody, you know? And luckily, for many years, I was living in, you know, what was pretty much a gay world. And it got decimated piece by piece by piece.
KELLY: Picano's death was announced on Facebook by his publisher, Rebel Satori Press. The company said Picano's work showed his storytelling prowess and also his commitment to examining the complexities of love, sexuality and the human experience.
CHANG: People close to Picano say he was glad to live as long as he did. The cause of his death, according to The New York Times, was complications from lymphoma.
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