“A tremendously entertaining collection of anecdotes and portraits that only a witness
(and a good writer) could report in such vivid detail.”—The New York Times Book Review


978-0-9844707-7-8
$16

True Stories: Portraits from My Past, by Felice Picano


From author Felice Picano, co-founder of the path-breaking Violet Quill Club, comes a new collection of memoirs, many of which have never appeared in print. Picano presents sweet and sometimes controversial anecdotes of his precocious childhood, odd, funny, and often disturbing encounters from before he found his calling as a writer and later as one the first GLBT publishers. Throughout are his delightful encounters and surprising relationships with the one-of-a-kind and the famous—including Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Charles Henry Ford, Bette Midler, and Diana Vreeland.

“What makes his memoir invaluable and enjoyable is his willingness to dish.”

—The New York Times

About the author

Felice Picano is the author of more than twenty-five books of poetry, fiction, memoirs, nonfiction, and plays. His work has been translated into many languages and several of his titles have been national and international bestsellers. He is considered a founder of modern gay literature along with the other members of the Violet Quill. Picano also began and operated the SeaHorse Press and Gay Presses of New York for fifteen years. His first novel was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Since then he’s been nominated for and/or won dozens of literary awards. Recent work includes a collection of stories, Tales: From a Distant Planet, and a history and memoir of his early gay life in New York, Art & Sex in Greenwich Village. Picano teaches at Antioch College, Los Angeles.

Praise for the memoirs of Felice Picano

"A tremendously entertaining collection of anecdotes and portraits that only a witness (and a good writer) could report in such vivid detail."
—The New York Times Book Review on Art & Sex in Greenwich Village

“Compelling and engrossing, it will conjure up memories of everyone’s adolescence, straight or gay.”
—Out Magazine

“A lovely, not too nostalgic portrait of what is now a vanished bohemia.”
—Lambda Book Report

“His glints of flashing wit and subtle hints of dark decadence transcend clichés.”
—Library Journal

“Picano deftly evokes those placid Eisenhower years of bicycles, boners and book reports. He makes us remember what it feels like to be a child. It really glows.”
—The Advocate

“Arresting autobiography.”
—Booklist

“A stunning tale.”
—San Francisco Examiner

“It is fortunate that someone as talented as Picano survived to tell the story, to remind us of the glorious decade between Stonewall and AIDS, and of the gifted men and women who made that decade so memorable.”
—After Elton