Portrait

Federico García Lorca

Born: 5 June 1898Fuente Vaqueros, Spain
Died: 19 August 1936Víznar, Spain · aged 38

Poet and playwrightSpain90th anniversary of death

Federico García Lorca

A poet and playwright whose work joined desire, social constraint and the language of Andalusia.

Federico García Lorca was born in Fuente Vaqueros in 1898. He grew up near Granada before moving to Madrid’s Residencia de Estudiantes, where his friends included Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. His intense attachment to Dalí became an important part of his early emotional life.

“Gypsy Ballads” (1928) established his reputation. A stay in New York in 1929–30 led to the poems later collected in “Poet in New York”, a response to isolation, racism and the modern city. Back in Spain, Lorca took theatre to rural audiences with the student company La Barraca.

His plays, including “Blood Wedding”, first performed in 1933, “Yerma” (1934) and “The House of Bernarda Alba” (1936), explore desire trapped by family and social authority. His love for men also found expression in the “Sonnets of Dark Love”, which were not published in full until the 1980s.

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist forces arrested Lorca in Granada. He was shot near Víznar in August 1936. His remains have not been identified, and the circumstances of his killing continue to be investigated.

More in June

01JunDied 196858th anniversary of death

Witter Bynner

A poet, translator of Chinese poetry and literary hoaxer, he lived openly with his partner in Santa Fe for more than three decades.

01JunDied 200818th anniversary of death

Yves Saint Laurent

He put women in trouser suits and tuxedos – and built one of the great fashion houses with his partner Pierre Bergé.

02JunBorn 195175th birthday

Gilbert Baker

He dyed and sewed the first rainbow flags by hand – and refused to trademark them, because the flag belonged to everyone.

02JunBorn 1879147th birthday

Alla Nazimova

A Broadway star who became a Hollywood producer, she took artistic risks and helped shape its queer social circles.

02JunDied 196264th anniversary of death

Vita Sackville-West

An aristocrat who loved women, eloped with Violet Trefusis dressed as a man – and inspired Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”.

02JunDied 197056th anniversary of death

Lucía Sánchez Saornil

An avant-garde poet who wrote love poems to women under a male name – and co-founded the anarchist women’s movement Mujeres Libres.

03JunBorn 1906120th birthday

Josephine Baker

The star of 1920s Paris was also a spy for the Resistance and a civil rights fighter – and, her biographers say, loved women as well as men.

03JunBorn 1926100th birthday

Allen Ginsberg

The obscenity trial over “Howl” helped make his poetry a landmark in the struggle over free expression.

03JunBorn 198937th birthday

Daniela Vega

The star of “A Fantastic Woman” was the first trans person to present at the Oscars – and helped Chile pass its gender identity law.

03JunDied 199135th anniversary of death

Eva Le Gallienne

A Broadway star at 21, she gave it up to found a theatre for everyone – and called love between women “the most beautiful thing in the world”.

03JunDied 20251st anniversary of death

Edmund White

His fiction, memoirs and biographies traced gay experience from secrecy and liberation to the losses of the AIDS years.

04JunDied 200521st anniversary of death

Jean O’Leary

A former nun, she brought gay and lesbian activists into the White House for the first time in 1977 – and co-founded National Coming Out Day.

05JunBorn 1887139th birthday

Ruth Benedict

The anthropologist who wrote “Patterns of Culture” argued that what counts as normal depends on culture – and loved Margaret Mead.

05JunBorn 1883143rd birthday

John Maynard Keynes

The most influential economist of the 20th century had relationships with men for years – before he married a Russian ballerina.

06JunBorn 1875151st birthday

Thomas Mann

The Nobel laureate of “Buddenbrooks” and “Death in Venice” was a married father of six – and his diaries reveal a lifelong desire for men.

06JunBorn 1894132nd birthday

Violet Trefusis

Her passionate affair with Vita Sackville-West inspired Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” – and she wrote novels in English and French.

07JunBorn 196759th birthday

Muhsin Hendricks

Often called the world’s first openly gay imam, he created spaces where queer Muslims could keep both their faith and themselves.

07JunDied 197056th anniversary of death

E. M. Forster

His published novels challenged social convention; “Maurice”, withheld until after his death, imagined a happy future for two men.

07JunDied 195472nd anniversary of death

Alan Turing

His ideas helped make modern computing possible. His work on Enigma served Britain during the war; in 1952, Britain prosecuted him for a relationship with another man.

08JunBorn 1903123rd birthday

Marguerite Yourcenar

The author of “Memoirs of Hadrian” was the first woman elected to the Académie française – and lived for forty years with Grace Frick.

08JunDied 195670th anniversary of death

Marie Laurencin

The only woman among the early Cubists painted dreamy women in pastel – and loved both men and women.

08JunDied 1768258th anniversary of death

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

The founder of modern art history celebrated the beauty of Greek statues of young men – and wrote passionate letters to his male friends.

09JunBorn 198145th birthday

Parinya Charoenphol

She fought her way to the top of Thai boxing wearing make-up – to pay for her gender-affirming surgery.

09JunBorn 195274th birthday

Bülent Ersoy

Turkey’s “Diva” sustained a major musical career despite a performance ban and years without legal recognition as a woman.

09JunDied 20242nd anniversary of death

Lynn Conway

IBM fired her for transitioning in 1968 – she went on to revolutionise microchip design and became a role model for trans engineers.

09JunDied 1701325th anniversary of death

Philippe d’Orléans

The Sun King’s brother wore dresses and make-up and lived openly with his male lover at Versailles – protected by his rank.

10JunBorn 1899127th birthday

Anita Berber

Her dance, films and public image challenged the boundaries of respectability in Weimar Berlin.

10JunBorn 196363rd birthday

Petra De Sutter

A specialist in reproductive medicine who became Europe’s first transgender deputy prime minister.

10JunBorn 192898th birthday

Maurice Sendak

The creator of “Where the Wild Things Are” lived with his partner for fifty years – and only spoke about it publicly at 80.

10JunDied 198244th anniversary of death

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

In just 13 years he made more than 40 films – about love, exploitation and outsiders, including gay men like himself.

10JunDied 195868th anniversary of death

Angelina Weld Grimké

She wrote one of the first plays against lynching – and in her letters and unpublished poems, she wrote of her love for women.

10JunDied 194482nd anniversary of death

Christa Winsloe

She wrote “Mädchen in Uniform”, one of the first films to portray love between women with sympathy – and was murdered with her partner in 1944.

11JunBorn 1877149th birthday

Renée Vivien

A British-born poet who wrote in French about love between women and became the “Muse of the Violets” of Paris.

David Hockney

He made gay relationships an open subject of painting and kept finding new ways to depict people, places and looking itself.

12JunBorn 1892134th birthday

Djuna Barnes

Her journalism, drawings and modernist fiction culminated in “Nightwood”, a searching novel of desire and loss.

13JunBorn 1846180th birthday

Rose Cleveland

The President’s sister served as First Lady – and her love letters to Evangeline Simpson are among the best-documented lesbian romances of the 19th century.

13JunDied 200521st anniversary of death

Eugénio de Andrade

A Portuguese poet whose spare, sensual writing found meaning in the body and the natural world.

13JunDied 1886140th anniversary of death

Ludwig II of Bavaria

The “fairy-tale king” built Neuschwanstein, adored Wagner – and wrote in his diaries about his struggle against his love for men.

14JunBorn 196165th birthday

Boy George

Culture Club’s singer brought an androgynous image and a distinctive soul voice into mainstream 1980s pop.

14JunBorn 197452nd birthday

FannyAnn Eddy

A Sierra Leonean activist who insisted that LGBTQ people be seen and protected.

14JunDied 20206th anniversary of death

Sarah Hegazi

She raised a rainbow flag at a concert in Cairo in 2017 – and was imprisoned for it.

14JunDied 200224th anniversary of death

June Jordan

A poet who wrote about race, gender and justice – and who defended bisexuality as a political stance long before it was common.

15JunBorn 1891135th birthday

Eva Kotchever

A Jewish writer and café owner whose book preserved an early portrait of lesbian life in New York.

15JunDied 199432nd anniversary of death

Manos Hadjidakis

The composer of “Never on Sunday” won an Oscar and shaped modern Greek music – and did not hide his homosexuality in a conservative society.

16JunBorn 195175th birthday

Lou Sullivan

The first trans man known to identify publicly as gay, he showed that gender identity and sexual orientation are two different things.

17JunBorn 197947th birthday

Frank Mugisha

A Ugandan activist who built practical support networks and challenged anti-LGBTQ persecution.

18JunDied 198244th anniversary of death

Djuna Barnes

Her journalism, drawings and modernist fiction culminated in “Nightwood”, a searching novel of desire and loss.

19JunDied 195571st anniversary of death

Adrienne Monnier

Her bookshop on the rue de l’Odéon was the heart of literary Paris – and across the street lived and worked her partner, Sylvia Beach.

20JunBorn 192997th birthday

Edith Windsor

A federal tax bill after her wife’s death led to a Supreme Court victory that changed the treatment of same-sex marriages.

Akihiro Miwa

A survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, the singer and actor became a distinctive queer presence on Japan’s stages, on television and in Studio Ghibli films.

21JunBorn 194581st birthday

Mel Boozer

In 1980 he became the first openly gay person nominated for Vice President – and told the Democratic convention there was no difference between racism and homophobia.

21JunBorn 193591st birthday

Françoise Sagan

A novelist whose lucid, spare prose made pleasure and emotional uncertainty feel newly direct.

21JunBorn 196561st birthday

Lana Wachowski

Co-creator of “The Matrix”, she became one of the first major Hollywood directors to come out as a trans woman.

22JunBorn 1876150th birthday

Gwen John

A Welsh painter whose quiet portraits emerged from an independent life of work, faith and intense attachment.

22JunDied 198838th anniversary of death

Leonard Matlovich

“They gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” – the decorated sergeant who challenged the US military’s ban on gay soldiers.

23JunBorn 1894132nd birthday

Alfred Kinsey

His interviews challenged America’s assumptions about sex and introduced the Kinsey scale of sexual orientation.

23JunBorn 1912114th birthday

Alan Turing

His ideas helped make modern computing possible. His work on Enigma served Britain during the war; in 1952, Britain prosecuted him for a relationship with another man.

24JunBorn 196561st birthday

Vladimir Luxuria

She organised Italy’s first Pride and in 2006 became the first openly transgender member of a national parliament in Europe.

25JunBorn 193591st birthday

Larry Kramer

The angriest voice of the AIDS crisis co-founded GMHC and ACT UP – and shouted until the world listened.

25JunBorn 196363rd birthday

George Michael

A pop singer and songwriter who turned public scrutiny into a more openly self-directed career.

25JunDied 198442nd anniversary of death

Michel Foucault

He examined how institutions shape ideas of madness, crime and sexuality, giving later queer thinkers new ways to question what society calls normal.

26JunBorn 1911115th birthday

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Perhaps the greatest all-round athlete of the 20th century, she won Olympic gold and ten golf majors – and spent her last years with her companion Betty Dodd.

27JunDied 200125th anniversary of death

Tove Jansson

The creator of the Moomins spent her summers on a tiny island with her partner, the artist Tuulikki Pietilä.

28JunBorn 194284th birthday

Jim Kolbe

A moderate Republican congressman from Arizona, he came out in 1996 – and was re-elected five more times.

28JunDied 192997th anniversary of death

Edward Carpenter

A socialist writer who argued for same-sex love and built a life with George Merrill.

29JunBorn 196759th birthday

Carl Hester

An openly gay rider from the tiny island of Sark, he won Olympic gold in London 2012 and trained the great Charlotte Dujardin.

30JunDied 1926100th anniversary of death

Eva Gore-Booth

An Irish aristocrat who fought for working women’s votes and wages – and lived for thirty years with her companion Esther Roper.