Richard Natale
Raised by an immigrant family and Catholic-schooled until university, Richard Natale fell in love and embarked on a heterosexual marriage right out of college. After his divorce, he began exploring his sexuality and found acceptance and freedom in New York’s LGBTQ+ community. His journalism career brought him to Los Angeles, where, soon after, he entered into his first long-term same-sex relationship, which ended twelve years later when he lost his partner to AIDS. After years of grieving, he found lasting love a second time with his current husband of thirty years, which helped fuel a new chapter in his life: writing and publishing several novels and dozens of short stories. His most recent effort, Greenwich Connection, explores queer life in Greenwich Village during the last sixty years of the twentieth century. Looking back, Richard reflects on love, loss, aging, and the myriad possibilities that come from being open to new adventures.