Latest news with #GarthGreenwell
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Edmund White, novelist and great chronicler of gay life, dies aged 85
Edmund White, the American writer, playwright and essayist who attracted acclaim for his semi-autobiographical novels such as A Boy's Own Story – and who literally wrote the book on gay sex, with the pioneering The Joy of Gay Sex – has died aged 85. His death was confirmed to the Guardian by his agent Bill Clegg on Wednesday. White was a major influence on modern gay literature, with LGBTQ writing prizes named after him and authors including Garth Greenwell, Edouard Louis, Ocean Vuong, Brandon Taylor and Alexander Chee all noting his importance. Having come up in the late 1970s, he once said of his generation: 'Gay fiction before that, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote, was written for straight readers. We had a gay readership in mind, and that made all the difference. We didn't have to spell out what Fire Island was.' Born in Ohio in 1940, White grew up in Illinois. He was accepted to Harvard but instead chose to attend University of Michigan in order to stay near his therapist, who had assured White he could 'cure' homosexuality; a decision he would touch on in his novels. He then moved to New York, then San Francisco, where he began a career as a freelance writer and later a magazine editor. His 1973 debut novel, Forgetting Elena was praised by Vladimir Nabokov as 'a marvelous book'. It was followed in 1977 by The Joy of Gay Sex, a pioneering sex manual White wrote with his psychotherapist Charles Silverstein. 'I think if I wrote it alone it would have been called The Tragedy of Gay Sex,' White once joked to the Guardian. '[Silverstein] brought in the warm, cuddly part.' For much of White's career he drew on his own life to write novels about gay men and sexual freedom. Arguably his best-known work, 1982's A Boy's Own Story, was the first in a trilogy that drew on his life from boyhood to middle age, followed by The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997). White lived in France between 1983 and 1990, where he befriended the likes of Michel Foucault and developed an interest in French literature, going on to write admired biographies of Jean Genet – which won White a Pulitzer prize – as well as Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. Over his entire career White wrote more than 30 books. Some of his more notable novels included The Married Man, which also drew on his life; Fanny: A Fiction, a historical novel about the author Frances Trollope and social reformer Frances Wright. Over his career he published five memoirs: My Lives in 2005; City Boy, about his life in New York in the 1960s and 1970s, in 2009; Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris, in 2014; The Unpunished Vice, about his tastes in literature, in 2018; and The Loves of My Life, about his prolific sex life, in 2025. White estimate he slept with three men a week for 20 years; in 1970s New York, he wrote: 'I thought it was quite normal to take a break from writing at two in the morning, saunter down to the piers, and have sex with 20 men in a truck. When I wrote that I'd had sex over the years with 3,000 men, one of my contemporaries asked pityingly: 'Why so few?'' White was diagnosed HIV positive in 1984. 'I wasn't surprised, but I was very gloomy,' he told the Guardian in January. 'I kind of pulled the covers over my head and thought: 'Oh gee, I'll be dead in a year or two' … it turned out that I was a slow progressor.' White taught at Brown University and became a professor of creative writing at Princeton University. White is survived by Michael Carroll, his husband and partner of almost 30 years.
ABC News
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Lucy Dacus answers your questions about life, love and the papal conclave
You might know Lucy Dacus as one-third of Boygenius (alongside Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers) or the writer of one of the most devastating songs of 2018 (it's 'Night Shift', obviously). She's also a well-established artist in her own right, and dropped her fourth album in March. To celebrate the release of Forever Is A Feeling and for a cheeky catch up, Lucy joined Abby and Tyrone on Drive and answered some of your burning questions. Who was your niche childhood celebrity crush? - Annabelle I've said this before – it's the poet dog from the Goofy Movie , but I feel like I should pick somebody else. I said this recently but all the Bond girls. I would watch all the James Bond movies and, um, that was important. I kinda had a crush on the goth chick from Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants . She was just so blasé. The way that kids pick their Disney princess, I feel like I had a friend group and we would pick who we were in that book or movie and I was definitely her. What books or films inspired this album? - Ruby There's a book called Written On The Body by Jeanette Winterson. It's narrated by someone whose gender is never disclosed, and they have this passionate, obsession type love for this person. And the way that they write about how they think about the person and what it's like to be in the same room as them and to slip into love with them is... just electric. So I get some inspiration from that. Garth Greenwell is a great writer, he actually wrote my bio for this [album]. He has a book called Cleanness and a book called What Belongs To You that are very sexy and kind of visceral and still really deep and emotional. Just about at what point do we reach into each others' hearts – if you're already physically engaged, at what do you become emotionally engaged? What would your advice be for someone going through a lesbian break-up? - Z I don't know if there's any blanket advice, every situation is so different. Because, I don't know, I could be like 'well, you're better off', or it could be like 'you know, things change'. Here's maybe the piece of advice I give, and this is not just lesbian, this is just for people in general: Ideally relationships are places where we can meet each other where we're at and show each other more of ourselves. And at a certain point, maybe you outpace each other and you have to diverge. Ideally it can be done painlessly, but almost never is that the case. So if you're feeling pain, you don't have to shy away from it. That's just a part of life. I want to write music but it always feels like I'm performing or trying to put on someone I'm not. How do I be more authentic? - Amy Well, the good thing is anything you make is authentic to you, whether it's a performance or not. No one is actually faking it. Some people have an identity they assume. Some people really write from the heart. Some people you feel as disingenuous, other people you feel really genuine, whether or not it's a fictional character that they're within. There's really no wrong entry point. So if you have an easier time writing from another perspective... secretly, you're still just in it. I don't think you actually have to try that hard and I don't know if you're really off-base. I haven't heard your music, but that's what I would say. Can you tour in like a year so I can get my finances together? - Adele I literally wish I could speak to that. I'm very eager to get over there – and my whole band and crew – we have a real soft spot and excitement at the idea of going to Australia. So know that my heart's in the right place. Do you think you would have won if you were competing in the recent papal conclave? - @gorgeousfart I'm not Catholic! Well, but I guess they're getting anybody in there now, it sounds like. So maybe I would have had more of a chance.
Associated Press
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Garth Greenwell's ‘Small Rain' wins PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction
NEW YORK (AP) — Garth Greenwell's 'Small Rain,' in which a poet falls ill and confronts mortality, the meaning of art and the failures of health care, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction on Monday. 'Garth Greenwell has wrought a narrative of illness and identity in visceral detail, conveyed with a precision of language that steals the breath,' the judges' citation reads in part. Greenwell's award includes a $15,000 cash prize. Finalists, each of whom receive $5,000, include 'Pemi Aguda for 'Ghostroots,' Susan Muaddi Darraj for 'Behind You Is the Sea,' Percival Everett for 'James' and Danzy Senna for 'Colored Television.' Previous winners include Philip Roth, Ann Patchett and Yiyun Li. The awards were established in 1981. They are named for the late Nobel laureate William Faulkner.
