Edmund White

White is the author of seven books, including "Forgetting Elena," "States of Desire: Travels in Gay America," and "Genet: A Biography," for which he was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lamda Literary Award. He has a new collection of essays from the past 25 years, "The Burning Library," many of which focus on gay life in America.

Writer Edmund White. He has been called "unquestionably the foremost American gay novelist." White's novels draw significantly from his own experiences in a style he calls "auto-fiction." In his newest book, "Genet: A Biography" (Knopf), White documents the life of controversial French writer, Jean Genet.

White's books include an autobiographical novel called, "A Boy's Own Story," and the nonfiction work, "States of Desire: Travels in Gay America." White was recently diagnosed with AIDS, and is working on a biography of Jean Genet.