Joseph Hansen was an American crime writer and poet. Although he published almost forty books in a wide variety of genres, Hansen is best remembered for his ground breaking series of crime novels starring his most iconic creation, Dave Brandstetter, an openly homosexual private eye who still embodied the tough, no-nonsense personality of the classic hardboiled protagonist. His first adventure, Fadeout, was published in 1970, and over the next twenty-one years eleven more entries in the series were written.
Hansen published his first work, a poem, in The New Yorker, in 1952. He also published poetry in other magazines, briefly sang with a folk-music-group on a California radio-station, and had several part-time jobs in bookstores and magazines.
At the beginning of his career as a novelist, Hansen wrote under the pseudonym James Colton or James Coulton, producing novels such as Strange Marriage and Known Homosexual. He also wrote two gothic novels under the pseudonym Rose Brock.
Hansen was also noted for writing poems, teaching workshops, and hosting a 1960s radio-show called Homosexuality Today. In 1970, he helped to found the first Gay Pride Parade in Hollywood. Hansen disliked the term "gay" and always described himself as "homosexual".1
