“…the strong thing about abundance is that in reality, you have everything and you have nothing, because you can’t take it with you.”
About the speaker
Robert Joseph Greene focused his writing career to teach gay men about bravery, chivalry, and selfless romantic acts.
Greene was already very personal in his writing when, in 2003, he was asked about his family’s heritage in Canada. The Halifax Herald Newspaper acquired a piece written by Greene called "Africaville: A Young Girls Journey.” It detailed his mother's memory as a child visiting long lost relatives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Greene believed that this branch of relatives came to Canada as runaway slaves from the USA.
Greene was able to make a dream come true by publishing his short story collection in "The Gay Icon Classics of the World", published by Icon Empire Press. The gay-themed love stories were from over 12 different countries. Each gay love story represented a culture and a people. It touched even the staunchest of critics.
Greene’s “This High School Has Closets” was a longlisted nominee for the Lambda Literary Awards in the 2012 young adult novels category.
Also in 2012, the much anticipated release of a new set of gay love stories was introduced in "The Gay Icon Classics Of The World II". The new collection showed a strong Asian influence that Greene felt he missed in the first volume.
Following the release of "The Gay Icon Classics of the World II" in 2012, a group of Russian students translated "The Blue Door", a story from the collection about a young Russian prince who comes out as gay, and used it as a protest against the "homosexual propaganda" laws enacted in Saint Petersburg. In 2013, Greene publicly stated that he had received death threats from readers in Russia over the story.
In 2015, Greene was a finalist for the Vancouver Pride Legacy Turquoise Award for the Arts.
He graduated from École privée Charles Péguy (Aix-en-Provence, France) and University of San Francisco with a minor in Western European Culture and Literature. Greene credits his writing talent to his mother who was an English teacher and his father who was the President and CEO of Greenebark Press, a publishing company.
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