aul Monette was the first openly gay person to give his papers to the UCLA Library. He did this in 1993, with additions given before his death and further donations by Winston Wilde after his death. Monette saw the first drafts of the finding aid for his papers and was helpful in clarifying descriptions so that scholars would know more about them. Monette was also the first author in the Library’s manuscript collections to have won the National Book Award.

His life follows a trajectory from writing what he referred to as “those brief lies” when he was still in the closet to coming out and telling “one person’s truth.” This phrase comes from an interview he gave to the gay writer and Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd: “One person’s truth, if told well, does not leave anyone out.”

Monette’s mature work was meant to be devoted to novels on the relationships gay men were inventing and developing after gay liberation in 1969. When AIDS struck, Monette then wrote his truth about suffering from and combating that disease. His fiction, non-fiction, and poetry are among the most read and most sustaining works to derive from the AIDS health and human crisis. Monette’s poems and non-fiction set new boundaries for lyricism and social commitment, particularly Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog (1988) and Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988). He won the National Book Award (non-fiction) for his inspiring coming out memoir, Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story (1992). The hundreds of fan letters written to Monette after publication of his final works show that his truth didn’t leave anyone out but spoke for these readers.

Had Paul Monette lived, he would have been sixty this year. The UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, with support from the Monette-Horwitz Trust, celebrates Monette’s life and work on Friday, October 14, 2005, with a conference, a reception to open an exhibit and launch a web exhibit, and a dinner given by the Trust.