August 10th

08-10-1881 – 06-01-1968 Witter Bynner – Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. He was an American poet, writer, and scholar. While teaching in Berkeley, he enlisted his former student Walter Willard “Spud” Johnson to join him as his secretary. He was also his lover. In June 1922, he and Johnson moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1930, Robert Hunt became Bynner’s lifelong companion. Together they entertained artists and literary figures such as D. H. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, Carl Sandburg, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, Igor Stravinsky, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Carl Van Vechten, Martha Graham, and Thornton Wilder. Hunt died of a heart attack in January 1964.

08-10-1953 Mark Doty – Born in Maryville, Tennessee. He is an American poet and memoirist. Doty won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. Doty’s third book, My Alexandria (1993), which deals with the AIDS epidemic, was chosen for the National Poetry Series by Philip Levine, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. When the book was published in the U.K., Doty became the first American poet to win the T.S. Eliot Prize, Britain’s most significant annual award for poetry. He has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, Columbian University, Cornell, and NYU. In 2011 Doty, was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He is openly gay and currently lives with his partner Alexander Hadel in New York City and in the hamlet of The Springs in East Hampton, New York.

08-10-1963 Andrew Sullivan – Born in South Godstone, Surrey, England. He is a British-born author, editor, and blogger, who has lived in the United States and has become a naturalized citizen. Sullivan is a conservative. He is a former editor of The New Republic and author or editor of six books. He was a pioneer of the political blog, starting his in 2000. He retired from blogging in 2015. Sullivan in 2003, wrote a Salon article identifying himself as a member of the gay “bear community.” On August 27, 2007, Sullivan married Aaron Tone in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

08-10-1973 Lisa Raymond – Born in Norristown, Pennsylvania. She is an American professional tennis player who has achieved notable success in doubles tennis. Raymond has 11 Grand Slam titles to her name: 6 in women’s doubles and 5 in mixed doubles. On June 12, 2ooo, she reached the world number one ranking in doubles. She, with her partner Mike Bryan, won the bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Raymond is openly lesbian and was in a long relationship with her former doubles partner Rennae Stubbs. According to Raymond, “I came out because I knew that there would be life after tennis, and being gay and playing tennis is not a big deal. There have been a lot of women in sports that have come out, and it’s not seen as anything ‘wow.’”

08-10-1984 Karl Westerberg (Manilla Luzon) – Born in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. He is an American drag queen and reality television personality. He is best known as taking 2nd place in Season 3 of Ru Paul’s Drag Race. Westerberg is also a graphic designer. His mother was born in the Philippines and his father is an American of German and Swedish ancestry. A longtime resident of New York City, he resided in Harlem with his boyfriend Antoine Ashley. Antoine died of heart failure at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore on October 1, 2012, at the age of 27.