Edmund White has recently been awarded the prestigious 2018 Pen/Saul Bellow award for career achievement in American fiction, joining an elite group of former winners, comprised of Phillip Roth, Don Delillo, Cormac Mccarthy, Toni Morrison, and Louise Erdrich. The judges of this year’s award cite White’s “honest, beautifully wrought and fiercely defiant books,” which number many and include A boy’s own story, The beautiful room is empty, and a Farewell Symphony.  He is the author of over twenty-five novels, novellas, and biographies and the editor of several anthologies.  White is an official author of the state of New York, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an Officier in the French Order of Arts and Letters, and winner of the France-Ameriques award and the Sicilian Mondello prize. White teaches writing at Princeton University and lives in New York City.