Michael Rumaker was born in Philadelphia in 1932. He is a graduate of Black Mountain College (1955) and Columbia University (1970). His first book, The Butterfly, is a fictionalized memoir of his brief affair with a young Yoko Ono, published before Ono became famous. His short stories, Gringos and other stories, appeared in 1967. He began to write directly about his life as a gay man in the volumes A Day and a Night at the Baths (1979, Triton: 2010) and My First Satyrnalia (1981). The novel Pagan Days (1991, reprinted 2013 by Spuyten Duyvil) is told from the perspective of an eight-year old boy struggling to understand his gay self. Black Mountain Days, a memoir of his time at Black Mountain College, has a strong autobiographical element alongside portraits of many students, faculty, and visitors (especially the poets Robert Creeley and Charles Olson) during its last years, 1952-1956.
Michele Madigan Somerville is the author of Wisegal (Ten Pell books, 2001) and Black Irish (Plain View Press, 2009). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.