Born June 24: Forrest Reid, Vladimir Luxuria

Only a few years after the Oscar Wilde trials, Forrest Reid published his second novel The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys [Kindle] while still a student at Christ's College, Cambridge, and with all the ignorant optimism of youth, he dedicated the book to his 62 year-old friend Henry James. The Master was shocked at the gay love story and outraged to be named in it; he never again spoke to Reid. A happier Cambridge connection came with E.M. Forster who continued to write and visit his former pupil until Reid's death in 1947. When a blue plaque was ready for Reid's house in 1952, Forster traveled to Belfast to unveil it. His 1912 novel Following Darkness [Kindle] is said to be an inspiration for Joyce's 1924 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In 1944 he won the James Tait prize for his sixteenth book of fiction and the climax of his Tom Barber trilogy, Young Tom. Praised in his lifetime for his explorations of boyhood a la Barrie and Walpole, Reid's work is forgotten today. Is it the gay factor or his flowery, sentimental style?

Wladimiro Guadagno moved from Foggia to Rome in 1985 when he was twenty, and twenty years later she ran for a seat in the Italian Parliament. Now Vladimir Luxuria, she won, becoming the world's second trans MP, after New Zealand's Georgina Beyer. Prior to her victory she had been an actress, cabaret entertainer, and party promoter, organizing Rome's first gay pride in June 1994. A member of the Communist Refoundation Party, she lost her re-election bid in 2008 and bounced back from defeat by appearing on "the Italian answer to Survivor," a celebrity reality tv contest show called L'Isola dei Famosi which took place in Honduras. Faced with fierce competition from this supermodel dating this soccer star, Luxuria triumphed, winning the hearts of Italy in the decisive public poll. Required to make a charitable contribution of fifty-percent of her 200,000 euro winnings, she did not choose a T, B, G, or L nonprofit but instead selected UNICEF because she won't have children herself. Although she exclusively uses the feminine pronoun, has had rhinoplasty and partial breast construction, and "lives as a female," she has chosen not to have sex reassignment surgery and "remains physically and legally male."