Edmund White, Author of “A Boy’s Own Story” and “The Joy of Gay Sex”, Dies at 85

NEED TO KNOW

Edmund White, nan pioneering writer who documented nan cheery acquisition done acclaimed useful of fabrication and nonfiction, has died. He was 85.

The writer’s decease connected June 3 was confirmed by his husband, Michael Carroll, and supplier Bill Clegg, The New York Times, The Guardian and NBC News report. White collapsed while waiting for an ambulance aft experiencing tummy unwellness symptoms, though an charismatic origin of decease has not yet been released. 

White was calved connected Jan. 13, 1940 successful Cincinnati. His parents divided erstwhile he was a child, and White moved astir nan state pinch his mother, Delilah, and sister, Margaret. White came retired to his mother erstwhile he was a teenager, and was sent to a psychiatrist.

Though he was accepted to Harvard for college, White decided to be nan University of Michigan, successful bid to enactment person to his therapist. He majored successful Chinese earlier he moved to New York successful 1962, wherever he worked astatine Time-Life Books. White became immersed successful nan city’s LGBTQ+ scene, and recounted seeing nan Stonewall Riots.

After leaving nan metropolis to unrecorded successful Rome and activity arsenic an editor for The Saturday Review successful San Francisco, White returned to New York successful 1973.

White published his debut novel, Forgetting Elena, successful 1973. Over nan people of his career, White wrote much than 30 books. One of his astir notable useful was nan 1982 semi-autobiographical caller A Boy’s Own Story, now seen arsenic a cornerstone of LGBTQ+ literature. The caller was besides nan first successful trilogy, later followed by The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997).

White’s nonfiction included nan 1977 book The Joy of Gay Sex, which he cowrote pinch his therapist Charles Silverstein. Inspired by Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex, White’s book served arsenic some a manual and a communicative astir life successful nan cheery community. His different nonfiction books included States of Desire: Travels successful Gay America (1980), City Boy: My Life successful New York During nan 1960s and '70s (2009) and The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir, published successful January 2025.

White besides authored respective biographies of notable French writers, including Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Proust and Jean Genet (Genet: A Biography was a finalist for nan 1994 Pulitzer Prize). The writer documented his clip surviving successful France successful nan 2014 memoir Inside a Pearl: My Years successful Paris.

White taught imaginative penning astatine Brown University and Princeton University. In 2019, he received nan National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

“It’s ne'er a time job; it’s ever a tremendous challenge,” White said of his activity successful a 2012 question and reply pinch nan Los Angeles Review of Books. “People ever inquire me, ‘Do you ever commencement a book and past put it speech and do thing different?’ And, unfortunately, no, I ever constitute everything correct to nan bitter end."