Groundbreaking gay author Edmund White passes away aged 85

A novelist, journalist, educator and activist, Edmund White left an indeleble mark on modern queer literature.

Writer Edmund White smiling at the camera in a black and white photo.
Image: Via X - @bernarddonoghue

Edmund White, the groundbreaking American writer who documented gay life, has died aged 85. In addition to authoring several pioneering novels, White was also a journalist, biographer, playwright, activist, teacher and memoirist.

White’s death was confirmed on Wednesday, June 4, by his agent Bill Clegg, who spoke to The Guardian. He died on Tuesday evening while waiting for an ambulance after experiencing stomach issues.

A major voice in modern queer literature, Edmund White left an indelible mark and his work inspired many authors who came after him, including Garth Greenwell, Édouard Louis, Ocean Vuong and more.

Born in Ohio in 1940, White lived his early years in Illinois. He was accepted to Harvard but decided to study at the University of Michigan so he could live close to his therapist, who was allegedly practising some form of conversion therapy.

Against the therapist’s wishes, he later moved to New York and then San Francisco, where he started working as a freelance writer. Throughout his remarkable career, he authored more than 30 books. His debut was Forgetting Elena, published in 1973, a novel that followed a young gay man who visits the queer haven of Fire Island.

In 1977, he published his groundbreaking book The Joy of Gay Sex, a pioneering sex manual White wrote with his psychotherapist Charles Silverstein. Speaking to The Guardian about the book years later, White said: “I think if I wrote it alone it would have been called The Tragedy of Gay Sex. [Silverstein] brought in the warm, cuddly part.”

 

Among his most notable works is A Boy’s Own Story (1982), a classic coming-of-age novel that went on to become a bestseller. The book was the first of a series, followed by The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997).

He also wrote books about novelist Marcel Proust and poet Arthur Rimbaud, as well as a biography of French playwright Jean Genet, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

 

Beyond his literary career, White was also present at the Stonewall Riots of 1969, an event that led to the birth of the modern gay liberation movement. Years later, White helped Larry Kramer set up the Gay Men’s Health Crisis at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. White himself received an HIV diagnosis in 1985.

Edmund White is survived by his husband, writer Michael Carroll.

 

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