Sanford Friedman

Sanford Friedman (June 11, 1928 – April 20, 2010) was an American novelist. He was gay and his books often featured LGBT themes.

Friedman's Totempole (1965) features an army love affair between its protagonist and a North Korean doctor war prisoner. Some have identified the Stephen Wolfe persona in this novel as being the first instance of a main character who is both Jewish and gay in American fiction.

Life Friedman was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the second son of Leonard and Madeline (Uris) Friedman; his elder brother, B. H. Friedman, also became a writer.

A 1945 graduate of the Horace Mann School, and in the same class as his lifelong friend Allard K. Lowenstein, Friedman earned his BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology. From 1951 to 1953, he served in the US Army as a military policeman in Korea, where he was awarded a Bronze Star. He taught writing at the Juilliard School and at SAGE.

He was a friend to many noted artists, among them Lee Krasner and Fritz Bultman, and for several years Friedman was the companion of the noted American poet, translator, and critic Richard Howard. Howard dedicated his poem "1915: A Pre-Raphaelite Ending, London" to him.

Friedman also was active off-Broadway as a writer and producer, collaborating with actor Howard Da Silva; author Ben Maddow; and playwright Arnold Perl. Perl's play "Tevya and his Daughters" (1957) -- co-produced by Friedman and starring Mike Kellin as Sholem Aleichem's dairyman—was the inspiration for "Fiddler on the Roof (1964)." In 1968, Friedman signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

Friedman died of a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment on April 20, 2010.

Awards and honors In 1965 Friedman was given the O. Henry Award from the Society of Arts & Sciences for Ocean, which formed part of his novel Totempole.

List of works Totempole (1965) A Haunted Woman (1968) Still Life: Two Short Novels (1975) Fritz Bultman: bronze sculpture 1963-1975, exhibition January 10 to February 7, 1976, with text by Sanford Friedman and footnotes to the exhibition by the artist (1976) Rip Van Winkle (1980) Conversations with Beethoven (2014)