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Michael Leo Denneny’s story began in Pawtucket. It was there, among the stacks of the Deborah Cook Sayles Public Library and the shelves of The Little Acorn Bookshop, that a young boy from a working-class Irish family discovered the power of the written word, and began a journey that would transform American publishing.

Born in 1943, Michael became a voracious reader early on. “He read a book or two a week,” his younger brother Joe recalls. Michael also became aware that he was gay when he was very young, something not easily articulated or accepted at that time, and his hometown library and bookstore soon became sanctuaries – places where books revealed new worlds of thought and possibility.

After graduating from Tolman High School a year early, his intellectual curiosity carried Michael to the University of Chicago, where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees, and was mentored by renowned social philosopher Hannah Arendt, with whom he would later develop a treasured friendship. In the early 1970s, he moved to New York City, launching a fifty-year groundbreaking publishing career. Michael went on to become the first openly gay editor at a major publishing house at a time when being gay was legal grounds for termination.

Undeterred, he worked with an astonishing array of writers including Ntozake Shange, Judith Thurman, Edmund White, R. Buckminster Fuller, G. Gordon Liddy, Mr. T, Larry Kramer, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Randy Shilts, co-founded Christopher Street magazine, and established Stonewall Inn Editions at St. Martin's Press in 1987, the first LGBTQ+ imprint at a leading publisher. Michael also authored three books, including his final work, On Christopher Street: Life, Sex and Death After Stonewall, a collection of writings and essays published by the University of Chicago Press just weeks before his death, a memoir that chronicled the voices of AIDS pioneers, many lost to the epidemic.

Before his death at the age of eighty, Michael often spoke about his desire to give back to the library where he had spent so much time as a young person – a place committed to providing an inclusive, safe learning environment for its patrons. After Michael’s passing in 2023, Joe was determined to ensure his brother’s wishes were realized.

When Joe approached library staff about establishing a speaker series in Michael's memory, they connected him with the Rhode Island Foundation. With the Foundation’s assistance and expertise, Joe established a designated fund that will provide ongoing support for programming at the Deborah Cook Sayles Public Library, aligned with Michael's values. "It's been seamless working with the Foundation," reflects Joe. “I couldn't ask for a smoother, easier way to accomplish our goals."

The Michael Leo Denneny Speaker Series Fund will provide for programming that honors Michael's commitment to education and freedom of expression, while sustaining the library's role as a place of discovery and possibility - just as it inspired a young Pawtucket reader decades ago.