Maine

Inaugural Poet

b. February 5, 1968

“I don’t exclusively align myself with any one particular group — Latino, Cuban, gay or ‘white’ — but I embrace them all.”

Blanco is the youngest, the first Latino and the first openly gay person to be named a U.S. inaugural poet. He read his poem “One Today,” written soon after the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. He describes the poem as “a unique snapshot of where we are as a country.”

Blanco was born in Madrid to Cuban exiles. Shortly thereafter, the family immigrated to New York and later settled in Miami, where Blanco was raised. He graduated from Florida International University with a degree in civil engineering and worked initially as a consulting civil engineer. His creative yearnings eventually sent him back to his alma mater, where he earned an MFA in creative writing.

His first book of poetry, “City of a Hundred Fires,” published in 1998, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh. After the book’s success, Blanco accepted a creative writing professorship at Central Connecticut State University. Subsequently, he taught at Georgetown University, American University and at the Writer’s Center.

Blanco’s poetry explores his cultural heritage and sexuality, most notably in “Looking for the Gulf Motel,” published in 2012. “It’s trying to understand how I fit between negotiating the world, between being mainstream gay and being Cuban gay,” he says.

His work has been published in The Nation, Ploughshares, New England Review, Americas Review and many other poetry journals and publications. He received the PEN Open Book Award for “Directions to the Beach of the Dead” in 2006 and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry for “Looking for the Gulf Motel” in 2013. He wrote and read the poem, “Matters of the Sea,” for the reopening ceremony of the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba, in 2015.

Blanco has participated in many charitable causes, including Freedom to Marry and One Fund, an organization that benefits victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. He lives in Bethel, Maine, with his partner, Dr. Mark Neveu, a research scientist.

Lawyer

b. June 8, 1961

“It’s not about me, it’s about the people in the lawsuits, the plaintiffs and their stories.”

For more than two decades, Mary Bonauto has served as the civil rights project director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). Regarded by The Advocate as “the country’s most powerful lawyer in the marriage equality fight,” Bonauto was lead counsel in legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and in the fight to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Born into a strict Catholic family in Newburgh, New York, Bonauto graduated from Hamilton College and the Northeastern University School of Law. In 1987, when she joined a small firm in Maine, Bonauto was only one of three openly gay lawyers in private practice in the state.

In 1989, she went to work for GLAD. She helped enforce Massachusetts’s new law protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. Bonauto was involved in litigation, lobbying and public education throughout New England.

She served as co-counsel in Baker v. Vermont, which challenged the state’s prohibition of same-sex marriage. The landmark 1999 ruling mandated in Vermont the country’s first civil unions with legal benefits similar to marriage.

Bonauto was lead counsel in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the litigation for marriage equality in Massachusetts. In 2003, the state’s highest court became the first in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage.

Bonauto led GLAD’s successful challenge to overturn DOMA in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management. In a 3-0 decision, the lower court ruling was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals, laying the groundwork for review by the United States Supreme Court.

In 2011, Boston Magazine named Bonauto one of the city’s “50 Most Powerful Women.” She was awarded Yale University’s Brudner prize for her contributions to the LGBT community. She has served as co-chair of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee of the American Bar Association.

Bonauto lives in Portland, Maine, with her partner of 23 years and their twin daughters.