Edmund White, iconic queer author present at Stonewall, dead at 85

Trailblazing author Edmund White — a pioneer in queer literature — has reportedly died at age 85.

On Wednesday, June 4, White's husband Michael Carroll confirmed the author's death from a "vicious stomach bug" that caused him to collapse, The New York Times reports.

White was considered a courageous trailblazer for being candid about topics that were considered taboo at the time (and unfortunately still are, even today). Notably, he was present at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 when its historic uprising took place. In April 2019, White recalled those experiences at Stonewall in his foreword to 2019's The Stonewall Reader.

White was also in an open relationship with Carroll since 1995 (CNN) and eventually got married to him in 2013. Moreover, White was open about being a person living with HIV throughout his life — even back in the 1980s, when the taboo surrounding the virus was at an all-time high. Over the years, he survived two strokes and a heart attack.

Related: Top 25 books illuminating the impact of HIV/AIDS

Hailed as "the godfather of queer lit" by The Chicago Tribune, the author's impact on gay literature was evident in his 1973 debut novel Forgetting Elena, the career-defining 1977 book The Joy of Gay Sex, and had just released a new book — The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir — in January 2025.

White's best-known works also included 1978's Nocturnes for the King of Naples, 1980's States of Desire, 1982's A Boy's Own Story, 1988's The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and 1997's The Farewell Symphony, to name a few.

Beyond his work in fiction and self-referential nonfiction, White authored high-profile biographies of Jean Genet, Marcel Proust, and Arthur Rimbaud.

Related: Two men talking: Edmund White and John Irving

Over the years, White received accolades like the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1983), the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography (1993), and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (1994).

Filmmaker Tiziano Sossi released a documentary in 2007, Edmund White: A Conversation in New York, in which the author was seen recalling legendary encounters with people like writer Truman Capote and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

This story is still developing…