Meet John Rechy

I am most grateful to Octavio Roca for sharing a fascinating profile The LAnd magazine recently did of John Rechy, a gay writer I am chagrinned to admit I wasn't familiar with. (Back in 2016, Lee Levine nominated Rechy's 1994 novel, Numbers, for our reading list, but it didn't make the cut.) Nearly 91 years old and still going strong on the evidence of this interview, Rechy is a Mexican-American novelist, essayist, memoirist, dramatist and literary critic who is counted among the pioneers of modern LGBT literature. City of Night, his debut novel, was a best-seller when published in 1963, and is still in print, as are many of his 18 books. (The painter David Hockney credits City of Night for enticing him to move to Los Angeles.) Rechy definitely sounds like someone to keep in mind for our next reading list!