May Sarton (1912 – 1995) was the pen name for Eleanore Marie Sarton, an American poet. Originally born in Belgium, Sarton and her family were forced to evacuate to England when Germany invaded Belgium after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand when Sarton was only two years old. A year later, Sarton and her family moved to America. Sarton would learn of her love of writing later into her life, and would write just about everything. She wrote biographies, poems, memoirs, the whole lot. Sarton is well-known for writing pieces of fiction that humanized homosexual people- which was a huge step for the time. While Sarton didn’t classify her works as “lesbian literature,” she still wrote complex pieces with complex gay characters. And that took courage to do, especially in her time.