December 6th

12-07-1873 – 04-24-1947 Willa Cather – Born in Gore, Virginia. She was an American writer. Her novels of frontier life on the great plains gained her recognition. Cather was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922). Throughout her life, her most significant friendships were with women, including Louise Pound, socialite Isabelle McClung, opera singer Olive Fremstad, and pianist Yalta Menuhin. Her relationship with Edith Lewis began in the early 1900s and continued through the last 39 years of her life.

12-07-1941 Val Wilmer – Born in Harrogate, England. She is a British photographer and writer, specializing in jazz, gospel, blues, and British African-Caribbean music and culture. At the age of fifteen, she began writing about Black music. Accompanied by her mother, who thought she was too young to go on her own, she attended many concerts. Her first article appeared in Jazz Journal in May 1959 when she was only seventeen. Her book As Serious As Your Life (1977), is considered a classic of jazz writing. Wilmer is also the author of Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This: My Life in the Jazz World (1989), an autobiography that talks about her development as an artist and journalist. She also talks about her coming out as a lesbian in a mainly male-dominated and sexist environment.

12-07-1964 Roberta Close – Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a Brazilian fashion model and was the first transgender model to pose for the Brazilian edition of Playboy. She has modeled for numerous fashion houses, including Thierry Mugler, Guy Laroche, and Jean-Paul Gaultier. In 1989, Close underwent sex reassignment surgery in London, England. In 1993, she married a Swiss man, Roland Granacher. On March 4, 2005, Close was legally declared a woman by a Brazilian judge. Her lawyer stated, “In the decision, the judge affirms that Roberta has been a woman from the time she was born; it was only that medical science in 1964 was not capable of identifying this, due to a physical problem she had.” She was issued a new birth certificate. In May 2015, Close revealed in an interview that she underwent genetic testing that revealed she is intersex.

12-07-1987 Aaron Carter – Born in Tampa, Florida. He is an American pop and hip hop singer that became popular in the early 2000s. His second album, Aaron’s Party (Come Get It), sold three million copies in the US and his third album, Oh Arron, went platinum. He has also appeared on Dancing With the Stars, the Broadway musical Seussical and the off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks. On February 10, 2017, he released an EP titled LøVë. Carter came out as bisexual on August 5, 2017.