DISCUSSION GROUP: THE WORKS OF EDMUND WHITE

Edmund White was born on January 13, 1940 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His parents divorced when White was seven years old. He moved with his mother and sister to Evanston. He has written of searching for books in the Evanston Public Library about homosexuality and found only Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and a biography of Nijinski. Neither book painted an attractive picture of life as a homosexual and did not ease his desperation as he tried to piece together his identity.

White was schooled at Cranbrook Academy and then studied at the University of Michigan (his major was Chinese). He moved to New York City and embarked on a five year relationship with another man. From 1962 - 1970, White worked for Time-Life Books. After a year in Rome, White came back to the U.S. and worked as an editor at The Saturday Review and Horizon. He and six other gay writers in New York formed the Violet Quill in the mid-1970's. This group included Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Felice Picano, George Whitmore, Christopher Cox, and Michael Grumley. The Violet Quill met in the apartments of its members where they read and offered critiques of each other's work. White has published several critically and commercially successful books: Forgetting Elena (1972) and Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978) as well as two largely autobiographical novels: A Boy's Own Story (1982) and The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988).