MATTHEW GREGORY “MONK” LEWIS, British gothic novelist, born (d: 1818); Have you ever read an 18th century Gothic romance? They are incomparably silly, overripe, and, except for their excruciatingly stilted language, great fun to read. Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto started the literary vogue, and it was quickly followed by Lewis’s Ambrosio, or The Monk (1795), and, in America, by the novels of Charles Brockden Brown. The Monk is the most lurid example of the genre, and Lewis was forced to delete many passages for a second edition that were considered “scandalous,” so scandalous, in fact, that Lewis’s literary stock skyrocketed and he found himself lionized by high society on the Isle of Hypocrites.

The Monk combines the supernatural, the horrible, and a little bit of raw sex in its plot about Ambrosio, the superior of the Capuchins of Madrid. (It is essential to the Anglo-Saxon Gothic novel that affairs of the flesh always take place in Latin climes.) Ambrosio is seduced by Matilda de Villanegas, a woman driven to blind nymphomania by demons, and who enters the monastery, and Ambrosio’s bed, disguised as a boy! After he discovers that the boy is actually a woman, Ambrosio’s entire character changes, and he pursues other women with the aid of magic and murder. His sins are found out and he is tortured by the Inquisition, finally being sentenced to death. He makes a bargain with the Devil to escape, but the Devil destroys him.

It seems apparent that had the wild nympho Matilda actually been a boy, none of Ambrosio’s problems would have followed. In real life, Lewis at twenty-eight was in love with fourteen year old William Kelly, a male incarnation of Matilda who brought him nothing but misery.

MINOR WHITE  was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator born on this date (d: 1976). He combined an intense interest in how people viewed and understood photographs with a personal vision that was guided by a variety of spiritual and intellectual philosophies. Starting in Oregon in 1937 and continuing until he died in 1976, White made thousands of black-and-white and color photographs of landscapes, people, and abstract subject matter, created with both technical mastery and a strong visual sense of light and shadow. He taught many classes, workshops, and retreats on photography at the California School of Fine Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, other schools, and in his own home. He lived much of his life as a closeted gay man, afraid to express himself publicly for fear of loss of his teaching jobs, and some of his most compelling images are figure studies of men whom he taught or with whom he had relationships. He helped start, and for many years was editor of, the photography magazine Aperture. After his death in 1976, White was hailed as one of America's greatest photographers.

White took up photography while very young but set it aside for a number of years to study botany and, later, poetry. He began to photograph seriously in 1937. His early years as a photographer were spent working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Portland, Ore. Many WPA photographers were chiefly concerned with documentation; White, however, preferred a more personal approach. Several of his photographs were included in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1941.

White served in the U.S. Army during WWII, and in 1945 he moved to New York City, where he became part of a circle of friends that included the influential photographers Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz His contact with Stieglitz helped him discover his own distinctive style. From Stieglitz he learned the expressive potential of the sequence, a group of photographs presented as a unit. White would present his work in such units along with text, creating arrangements that he hoped would inspire different moods, emotions, and associations in the viewer, moving beyond the conventional expressive possibilities of still photography. White also learned from Stieglitz the idea of the “equivalent,” or a photographic image intended as a visual metaphor for a state of being. Both in his photographs and in his writing, White became the foremost exponent of the sequence and the equivalent.

White was greatly influenced by Stieglitz's concept of "equivalence," which White interpreted as allowing photographs to represent more than their subject matter. He wrote "when a photograph functions as an Equivalent, the photograph is at once a record of something in front of the camera and simultaneously a spontaneous symbol. (A 'spontaneous symbol' is one which develops automatically to fill the need of the moment. A photograph of the bark of a tree, for example, may suddenly touch off a corresponding feeling of roughness of character within an individual.)"

In his later life he often made photographs of rocks, surf, wood and other natural objects that were isolated from their context, so that they became abstract forms. He intended these to be interpreted by the viewer as something more than what they actually present. According to White, "When a photographer presents us with what to him is an Equivalent, he is telling us in effect, 'I had a feeling about something and here is my metaphor of that feeling.'...What really happened is that he recognized an object or series of forms that, when photographed, would yield an image with specific suggestive powers that can direct the viewer into a specific and known feeling, state, or place within himself.

Among his best-known books are two collections, Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations (1969), which features some of his sequences, and Minor White: Rites and Passages (1978), with excerpts from his diaries and letters and a biographical essay by  James Baker Hall.

From 1965 to 1974 White taught photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. In 1968 he photographed in Maine and Vermont, United States and Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1973-1974 White photographed in Lima, Peru and Europe. He died June 24, 1976.

DAVID DIAMOND, American composer (d. 2005); An American composer of classical music. he was born in Rochester, NY and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Eastman School of Music under Bernard Rogers, also receiving lessons from Roger Sessions in New York City and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He won a number of awards including three Guggenheim Fellowships, and is considered one of the preeminent American composers of his generation.

Many of his works are tonal or modestly modal. His later style became more chromatic. Diamond was out long before it was socially acceptable and was and outspoken critic of anti-Semitism.

OLIVER SACKS CBE FRCP (d: 2015) was a British neurologist naturalist, historian of science, and author. Born on this date in Britain, and mostly educated there, he spent his career in the United States. He believed that the brain is the "most incredible thing in the universe". He became widely known for writing best-selling case histories about both his patients' and his own disorders and unusual experiences, with some of his books adapted for plays by major playwrights, feature films, animated short films, opera, dance, fine art, and musical works in the classical genre.

After Sacks received his medical degree from The Queen's College, Oxford in 1960, he interned at Middlesex Hospital (now part of University College, London) before moving to the US. He then interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at UCLA. He relocated to New York in 1965, where he first worked under a paid fellowship in neurochemistry and neuropathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Upon realizing that the neuro-research career he envisioned for himself would be a poor fit, in 1966 he began serving as neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care facility in the Bronx. While there, he worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. His treatment of those patients became the basis of his book Awakenings. In the period from 1966 to 1991 he was a neurological consultant to various New York City-area nursing homes (especially those operated by Little Sisters of the Poor), hospitals, and at the Bronx Psychiatric Center.

Sacks never married and lived alone for most of his life. He declined to share personal details until late in his life. He addressed his sexuality for the first time in his 2015 autobiography On the Move: A Life. Celibate for about 35 years since his forties, in 2008 he began a relatinonship with writer and New York Times contributor Bill Hayes. Their friendship slowly evolved into a committed long-term partnership that lasted until Sacks's death; Hayes wrote about it in the 2017 memoir Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me.

Poet, teacher and community activist JUNE JORDAN was born on this date in Harlem to Jamaican immigrant parents (d: 2002). Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-1970 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Women’s Foundation in 1994. Jordan attended Barnard College. She was an activist, poet, writer, teacher, and prominent figure in the civil rights, feminist, antiwar, and LGBTQ movements of the twentieth century. 

Of her career, Toni Morrison wrote, "I am talking about a span of forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art."

DAVID HOCKNEY, English artist, born; An important contributor to the British Pop-art movement of the 1960s, Hockney is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He settled in California during the 80's. While still a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries — alongside Peter Blake — that announced the arrival of British Pop Art. He became associated with the movement, but his early works also display expressionist elements, not dissimilar to certain works by Francis Bacon.

Sometimes, as in We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), named after a poem by Walt Whitman, these works make reference to his sexuality. In 1963 Hockney visited New York, making contact with Andy Warhol. Later, a visit to California, where he settled, inspired Hockney to make a series of oil paintings of swimming pools in L.A. These are executed in a more realistic style and use vibrant colors.

He also made prints, portraits of friends, and stage designs for the Royal Court Theater, Glyndebourne, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. Early in his career, Hockney exhibited a distinct crush on rock star Cliff Richards.

Richard was referenced directly and indirectly in Hockney's work. Often Hockney referred to him as 'Doll Boy' after Richard's 1958 hit single Living Doll and many early works have the letters "CR" or "DB" or the numerical representation "42" where 4 represents the D and 2 stands for the B. For more of Hockney check out his web site.

LISA BANES was an American actress born on this date (d: 2021). She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1984 for Isn't it Romantic? and won a 1981 Theatre World Award for her performance as Alison Porter Off-Broadway in Look Back in Anger. In film, she appeared in Cocktail, Freedom Writers, Gone Girl, and as Hollis in A Cure for Wellness.

She appeared on Broadway several times. She played Cassie in the Neil Simon play Rumors in 1988 with Christine Baranski, Margaret Lord in the musical High Society with Anna Kendrick in 1998, was in Accent on Youth with David Hyde Pierce in 2009, and most recently in the 2010 revival of Present Laughter with Victor Garber.

On television, Banes had regular roles as Doreen Morrison in The Trials of Rosie O'Neill starring Sharon Gless, and as Mayor Anita Massengil on the Fox comedy series Son of the Beach. She also had recurring roles on The King of Queens as Carrie's boss Georgia Boone, Six Feet Under as Victoria, on One Life to Live as Eve McBain, and on Nashville Season 6 as the Ranch Director. She also guest starred as a Trill doctor in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Equilibrium". Banes played Anne Kane in the 1985 TV miniseries Kane & Abel. Her other television credits include China Beach; Murder, She Wrote; The Practice; NYPD Blue; Desperate Housewives; Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; The Good Wife; NCIS; and Once Upon a Time. From 2010 to 2016, she had a recurring role as Ellen Collins on Royal Pains.

Banes also starred as Mrs. Berry in The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Bonnie in Cocktail, Flora in Dragonfly, and Christina Ricci's mother in Pumpkin. In 2014, she appeared in David Fincher's Gone Girl as Marybeth Elliott, mother of Amy Elliott (Rosamund Pike).

Banes lived in Los Angeles. She was married to Kathryn Kranhold. On June 4, 2021, Banes was struck by a motorized scooter in a hit and run collision in New York City. She was admitted to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital with a traumatic brain injury, and died there on June 14 at the age of 65.

PAUL LISICKY is an American novelist and memoirist born on this date. While a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He also received awards from the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Henfield Foundation, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a winter Fellow. He is the author of the novel Lawnboy and the memoir Famous Builder. He has taught creative writing at The University of Houston, Antioch University, and Sarah Lawrence College, in addition to several summer writing programs including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Indiana Summer Writers Conference. He currently lives in New York City.

JEREMY POPE, is an American actor and singer born on this date. Pope is the sixth person in Tony Award history to be nominated in two categories for separate performances during the same year, when he received nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for his role as "Pharus Jonathan Young" in Choir Boy and Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for his role as Eddie Kendricks in Ain't Too Proud in 2019, the latter of which also earned him a nomination for a 2020 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

In 2020, Pope starred in the Netflix miniseries Hollywood, which earned him a nomination for a 2020 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Leading Role in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. His most recent work is as the young gay man who joins the Marines, based on (and directed by) the book by Elegance Bratton.