Author Maurice Sendak: "I’m Gay"

Children’s
book author Maurice Sendak has been asked many questions
throughout his career, but when New York Times
writer Patricia Cohen asked if there is anything he’d
never before been asked, the author paused before
saying, “Well, that I’m gay.”

The 80-year-old
author of the legendary children’s book Where the
Wild Things Are revealed in the interview that
he “just didn’t think it was
anybody’s business.” Sendak told the
Times that he lived with his partner,
psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn, for 50 years before he passed
away in 2007.

Sendak sat down
with The New York Times to discuss a benefit
celebrating his career. The event drew a slew of
celebrity attention, including Meryl Streep, James
Gandolfini, and playwright Tony Kushner, who called
Sendak one of the most important “writers and
artists ever to work in children’s
literature.”

Sendak told the
Times that he never came out to his parents --
something he says he now regrets. He says he kept quiet
about being gay because the idea of a gay man writing
children’s books might have killed his career
when he was in his 20s and 30s.

Sendak is nearing
completion on his latest book, he told the Times, but
put work on hold when Glynn took ill. He told the
Times that for the first time in his life, he is
scared of not being able to finish a project.

“I feel
like I don’t have a lot of time left,” he
said.

On the heels of
the Times interview, Out.com's Popnography
blog extended a thanks to Sendak for "deciding at
80 years young there was no point in waiting around any
longer to be asked." (The Advocate)