John Preston’s Portland Years and the Making of Gay Literature

John Preston’s connection to Portland, Maine, forms an important part of the story of an author whose work joined gay literature, community organizing and public conversations about sexual health.

Born in Medfield, Massachusetts, in 1945, Preston lived in several major American cities before settling in Portland in 1979. He remained there until his death in 1994. During a career that covered fiction, nonfiction and editing, he produced or helped assemble nearly fifty books.

Preston was also active before his Portland years in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. There, he helped establish one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States. His work extended into sexual-health publishing: he edited two newsletters on the subject and, in 1975, served as editor of The Advocate.

His writing included gay erotica as well as books focused on identity, community and survival. Among his best-known erotic works were Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. He also wrote Franny, the Queen of Provincetown, which began as a novel and was later adapted for the stage.

Preston’s nonfiction and editorial projects addressed broader questions about gay life. The Big Gay Book: A Man’s Survival Guide for the Nineties presented one example of his practical, community-oriented work. Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS gathered writing shaped by the AIDS crisis, while Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong explored the relationship between gay men and place.

Taken together, these projects show the range of Preston’s contribution. He worked in erotic fiction, but his bibliography also connected personal experience with organizing, health information, memoir and ideas about belonging. His career reflects a period when gay writers and editors were building venues for subjects that mainstream publishing often left aside.

Preston regarded his erotic writing as pornography, while also participating in a movement during the 1970s and 1980s that sought greater literary quality in gay erotic fiction. That combination of explicit writing and editorial ambition helped define his place in gay literary history.

For Portland, Maine, Preston’s legacy is tied to the final phase of a life spent creating and circulating gay writing. His years in the city followed a period of activism and publishing that had already made him a significant figure in gay cultural life, and they preceded his death there in 1994.

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Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://web.archive.org/web/20120927153003/http://www.queertheory.com/histories/p/preston_john.htm - https://www.lambdaliterary.org/winners-finalists/07/14/lambda-literary-awards-1994/ - https://ronnisanlo.com/today-in-lgbt-history-december-11/ - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/29/obituaries/john-preston-48-author-editor-and-advocate-in-aids-causes.html - https://web.archive.org/web/20030620200656/http://www.bcla.bc.ca/ifc/censorshipbc/1990.html - https://archive.org/details/ioncehadmastero00pres Image rights Photograph description: This is the north side of the Mt. Scott community center. This is the center of activity for the Mt. Scott-Arleta neighborhood. Creator: Dshararpdx. License: CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANorth_side_of_Mt_Scott_Community_Center_building%2C_Portland%2C_Oregon.jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.