A native of Massachusetts, Monette attended Yale University and taught writing and literature in Boston before moving to West Hollywood in 1978 with his partner, lawyer Roger Horwitz. Monette’s most famous work, Borrowed Time, chronicles Horwitz’s struggle and eventual death from AIDS. Monette’s memoir Half a Man won the National Book Award in 1992.

Monette himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995, and a film, Paul Monette: On the Brink of Summer’s End, chronicles his last years.

–Christie Finn