Edmund White is the author of more than fifteen works of fiction, including his amalgamation of Heian Japan in The Tale of Genji and contemporary life on Fire Island, Forgetting Elena, and an autobiographical trilogy, A Boy’s Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988), and The Farewell Symphony (1997).

Born in Cincinnati and raised outside Chicago, White studied Chinese at the University of Michigan after initially declining admission to Harvard University in order to adhere to conversion therapy. He later declined Harvard again to follow a lover to New York City, where he worked at Time Life and launched his literary career.

White was the recipient of the inaugural Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1989 and awarded the 2019 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. White died at the age of eighty-five on June 3, 2025. (Photo credit: David Shankbone)