Edmund White
Edmund White’s books include a trio of autobiographical novels, A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Farewell Symphony, as well as biographies of Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He first appeared in Granta as a translator of Milan Kundera from the French, and is now a contributing editor to the magazine. In 2018, he received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Career Achievement in American Fiction.
Edmund White on Granta.com
Fiction | The Online Edition
Give it up for Billy
Edmund White
‘Were there moral cataracts that one could remove?’
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Self-Consciousness: Memoirs by John Updike
Edmund White
‘The freedom conferred by masks. Children and current wives cannot blame you for what your characters do and say.’
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
The End?: Writers respond to John Barth
Various Contributors
'I suggest he put aside all his writing rituals and that he give away all his money – that way he might find his talent will be rebooted.'
In Conversation | The Online Edition
Edmund White | Interview
Edmund White & Patrick Ryan
‘Although I was trying for the big-city and suburban realism of Yates, I didn’t mind adding a bit of fairy dust in the dialogue.’
Essays & Memoir | Issue 11
A Kidnapped West or Culture Bows Out
Milan Kundera
‘But since Europe itself is in the process of losing its own cultural identity, it perceives in Central Europe nothing but a political regime; put another way, it sees in Central Europe only Eastern Europe.’
Fiction | Issue 11
Skinned Alive
Edmund White
‘Once in a very great while he referred to me playfully as his ‘husband’, despite his revulsion against camp.’
Essays & Memoir | Issue 126
American Vogue
Edmund White
‘Mumbling is proof of artistic verisimilitude.’
Essays & Memoir | Issue 71
Shrinks
Edmund White
‘Self-doubt, which is a cousin to self-hatred, became my constant companion.’
Essays & Memoir | Issue 71
My First European
Edmund White
‘I belong to the last generation of Americans obsessed with Europe and intimidated by it.’
Essays & Memoir | Issue 17
Prague: A Disappearing Poem
Milan Kundera
‘Prague, this dramatic and suffering centre of Western destiny, is gradually fading away into the mists of Eastern Europe, to which it has never really belonged.’
Essays & Memoir | Issue 17
Books I Read This Year
Various Contributors
A selection of Granta contributors discuss the books they read in 2012.
Essays & Memoir | Issue 17
The Merry Widow
Edmund White
’She met my father in Texas and then they moved north, where I was born in Cincinnati.‘