Tuckahoe NY Pride

Richard Labonté was a Canadian writer and editor, best known as the editor or co-editor of numerous anthologies of LGBT literature. In 1980, he contributed to an Ottawa Citizen series on gay life in Ottawa, becoming one of the first Canadian journalists ever to come out in the pages of a mainstream newspaper. He was the co-founder of the LGBTQ bookstore A Different Light and managed the store in Silver Lake, California, for many years. He was an editor at independent publishers including Cleis Press and Arsenal Pulp Press, as well as a writer and book reviewers. Labonté won three Lambda Literary Awards for his work as an editor, for Best Gay Erotica 2005, First Person Queer (co-edited with Lawrence Schimel) in 2008 and Best Gay Erotica 2009.

Photo credit Mark Freeman