GENNADY TRIFONOV, a gay Russian poet and writer, died in March 2011 at age 65. I came to know him after he was released from a four-year term in a Siberian prison where he had been incarcerated for being openly gay, …

BY A SAD COINCIDENCE, two prominent pioneers of gay theatre who shared the same surname died within weeks of each other. Lanford Wilson died on March 24 at age 73 at his home in Sag Harbor, Long Island …

I WRITE in two capacities: first, as someone who counted Michael Hattersley among my very closest of friends, and second, as the editor of this magazine, to which Michael was a frequent contributor over a fifteen-year period. …

… Every would-be icon who has followed-from Madonna to Angelina Jolie or Paris Hilton-has sought to emulate her. But without Taylor’s unique blend of spontaneity and strategy, authenticity and audacity, none have risen to her heights. Nor is it likely, in this very different world, that anyone ever will.

As is our annual custom at year’s end, we bring to mind some of the prominent GLBT writers, artists, and activists that died over the past year.

In the 1960’s, Jill [Johnston] had achieved visibility and credibility among those in the know as a chronicler of the New York City avant-garde scene, particularly dance, through her regular column in The Village Voice. In the late 60’s Jill came out in her column, …

Perhaps what’s most striking about Flinsch’s work is its very existence. At a time when most gay artists were masking their sexuality and trying to fly under the radar, Flinsch was defiantly and brazenly homoerotic in his work.

As is our custom, we pay our respects-belatedly this year-to some of the prominent writers, artists, and activists from the GLBT community who left us during the past year.

HAROLD NORSE, whose iconoclastic poetry explored gay sexuality and identity and earned both wide critical acclaim and a large, enduring popular following, died of natural causes on Monday, June 8, 2009, in San Francisco, just one month before his 93rd birthday.

THE OSCAR WILDE Memorial Bookshop, founded in the pre-Stonewall year of 1967 and a fixture in New York’s Greenwich Village for 42 years, closed its doors for good on March 29, 2009. It was by most accounts the first bookstore in the United States to carry serious (non-pornographic) gay literature. Having survived the Stonewall Riots and the disco era, the AIDS epidemic and the GLBT publishing boom, in recent years the store’s survival had been threatened a number of times.