Official News Outlet for the Rainbow Round Table of the American Library Association
Thomas Anthony “Tomie” dePaola was an American writer and illustrator who created more than 260 children’s books such as Strega Nona. He received the Children’s Literature Legacy Award for his lifetime contribution to American children’s literature in 2011. https://www.mombian.com/2020/03/30/in-memoriam-tomie-depaola-author-of-oliver-button-is-a-sissy-and-much-more/
McNally made his Broadway debut with an adaptation of “The Lady of the Camellias” (1963), which was followed by the original plays “And Things That Go Bump in the Night” (1965), “Morning, Noon and Night” (1968) and an evening of one-acts titled “Bad Habits” (1974). He is probably best know to audiences (and to opera […]
A playwright and screenwriter, Crowley is best known for creating the first mainstream portrayal of gay men in Boys in the Band, which is being released later this year as a Netflix film. https://www.broadway.com/buzz/198715/mart-crowley-tony-winning-playwright-of-the-boys-in-the-band-is-dead-at-84/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/playwright-mart-crowley-boys-in-the-band-dead-84-964742/ You can watch a 2009 Theatre Talk interview with Crowley here: https://tv.cuny.edu/show/theatertalk/PR1010888
Willis was inducted last year into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for her decades of work crafting songs that stretched from pop and rock to R&B and soul and were recorded by myriad artists also including Ray Charles, Sister Sledge, Bonnie Raitt, Bryan Adams and Pet Shop Boys. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2019-12-26/allee-willis-obituary-friends-remember-songwriter
An early steward of LGBTQ studies and queer academic inquiry, Cohen is known for co-founding (along with Patrick Mcloughlin) the highly regarded Haworth Press, a publishing venture that specialized in producing scholarly journals and trade books. https://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/rem/12/14/noted-publisher-and-editor-bill-cohen-has-died/
Acclaimed gay cartoonist Howard Cruse, whose strip “Wendel” graced the pages of The Advocatein the 1980s, died of cancer November 26 in North Adams, Mass., surrounded by friends and family, his daughter, Kimberly Kolze Venter, announced on Facebook. He was 75. https://www.advocate.com/people/2019/12/03/gay-comic-artist-howard-cruse-creator-wendel-dies-75
Walter Mercado was known and loved in the US and Latin America for his astrology readings and predictions. He first became well known in Puerto Rico as an actor and dancer and moved to South Florida in the early 1990s. There, he joined Univision and began a new career with new fame, delivering horoscopes, always […]
Lee Bennett Hopkins, passionate educator and prolific children’s poet and anthologist, died on August 8 in Cape Coral, Fla., following a hospitalization for COPD. He was 81. Many of Hopkins’s books have been celebrated over the years with distinctions and awards from the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, and the National Council of […]
