NYC’s LGBT+ roll of honour
Here are just some of the astonishing number of famous names in New York City’s LGBT+ history. They are mostly creative or performing artists, underlining the important role the arts have always played here.
| Poets | Playwrights | Novelists |
| John Ashbery, W H Auden, Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Frank O’Hara, Edna St Vincent Millay | Edward Albee, Noël Coward, Arthur Laurents, Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson | James Baldwin, Djuna Barnes, Rita Mae Brown, William S Burroughs, Truman Capote, Henry James, Larry Kramer, Carson McCullers, Herman Melville, Felice Picano, Edmund White |
| Essayists | Artists | Photographers |
| Fran Lebowitz, Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan Sontag | Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paul Cadmus, Charles Demuth, Keith Haring, Marsden Hartley, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz | Berenice Abbott, Alvin Baltrop, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, George Platt Lynes, Francesco Scavullo |
| Designers | Composers | Singers |
| Thom Browne, Tom Ford, Calvin Klein, Gianni Versace | Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, John Cage, Aaron Copland, Jonathan Larson, Gian Carlo Menotti, Cole Porter, Ned Rorem, Stephen Sondheim, Ray Stonghorn, Virgil Thomson | Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters |
| Choreographers | Performers | Rockstars |
| Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, Antony Tudor | Penny Arcade, Joey Arias, Justin Vivian Bond, Montgomery Clift, Quentin Crisp, Alan Cumming, Greta Garbo, Joel Grey, Rudolf Nureyev | David Bowie, Lou Reed |
Please note that this list is partial, compiled with a ‘vague’ definition of a ‘New Yorker’ in mind and the realisation that names could belong in more than one category.
