Edmund White, the highly acclaimed author and major influencer on gay literature in America, died at the age of 85 on June 4, 2025, decades after his HIV diagnosis that never lead to AIDS.
Hollywood Life has compiled five facts about Edmund below.
Edmund White Wrote More Than 30 Books
The Ohio native authored more than 30 works of literature throughout his life — including fiction and nonfiction books. Among his most well-known were Forgetting Elena, A Boy’s Own Story, The Joy go Gay Sex, States of Desire, The Humble Lover and The Loves of My Life, the latter of which was published just months before Edmund’s death.
Edmund Was Married
From the early 1990s to the 2010s, Edmund and his husband, Michael Carroll, dated. During an interview with The Nation in 2014, the novelist revealed they had married in November of that year.
“I got married in November to my friend Michael Carroll, whom I’ve been with for 19 years. At least we didn’t rush into it,” Edmund quipped at the time.
When the writer died in 2025, Michael called his late husband “wise enough to be kind nearly always” in a public statement, obtained by The Guardian. He added that Edmund “was generally beyond exasperation and was generous. I keep thinking of something to tell him before I remember.”
Edmund Studied Chinese in College
Instead of attending Harvard University, where he was accepted, Edmund chose to attend the University of Michigan to major in Chinese.
Edmund Was Diagnosed HIV Positive in the 1980s
In 1984, Edmund learned that he was HIV positive, though he was a “non-progressor,” which is a rare case of someone who does not develop AIDS. Nevertheless, the diagnosis made him “gloomy,” the late author told The Guardian in late 2024.
“I kind of pulled the covers over my head and thought: ‘Oh gee, I’ll be dead in a year or two,’” Edmund told the outlet. “I did have a number of opportunistic diseases, like shingles, but it turned out that I was a slow progressor.”
According to the publication, Edmund’s T-cells, which are the cells that fight off infections, were in decline. However, their decline weren’t as rapid as others living with HIV, “and by the time they got dangerously low there were the new drugs, and so I survived. But I didn’t think I would,” he added.
Edmund Died After a Stomach Illness
On June 3, 2025, Edmund died following a “a vicious stomach bug,” Michael said, according to The New York Times. His exact cause of death is still unclear, and it’s unknown if being HIV positive had anything to do with his death. Previously, Edmund had survived to strokes in 2012 followed by a heart attack two years later.