Yone Noguchi: The Man Who Brought Haiku to the West
Born in Japan in 1875, Yone Noguchi left his home country for San Francisco in 1893. For a time, he worked as a journalist and domestic servant, but eventually turned his hand to poetry. He had a strong interest in English from an early age, and often adapted Japanese poetry forms, such as haiku, to English. With poetry published in The Lark, a San Francisco-based magazine, and his novels The American Diary of a Japanese Girl (1902) and its followup The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor-Maid, he became the first Japanese-born author to publish in the English language.
E.F. Benson
Edward Frederic Benson was born to a family of writers–-both his parents and three of his surviving siblings were all authors. And, according to some accounts, most of his immediate family was queer. Benson himself was gay, and included gay and lesbian characters in some of his works. His mother, after his father’s death, moved her long-time female companion into their house, and his sister Margaret, an Egyptologist as well as an author, also enjoyed a long-term same-sex relationship.