Called a literary lion of the gay world, Edmund White is best known for his autobiographical novels in which unabashed hedonism thrives, including A Boy's Own Story and The Beautiful Room is Empty.  A chronicler of gay life since the 1970s, White helped define the nascent parameters of gay culture. He is the author of the novel Hotel de Dream, several essays and biographies—including Jean Genet's—and the 1980 travelogue States of Desire: Travels in Gay America, which crystallized the time period just before the AIDS crisis. He is also the co-author of the pioneering 1977 book, The Joy of Gay Sex. Jack Holmes and His Friendd is the story of a decades-long friendship between two men that charts the sexual revolution from both gay and straight perspectives.

In the years following World War II, a first wave of gay literary power players—Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and Truman Capote among them—fueled changes that transformed the cultural landscape of the United States. In Eminent Outlaws, novelist Christopher Bram chronicles the rise of gay consciousness in American writing and the cross-currents, feuds, and subversive energies that provoked these pioneers. Bram is the author of nine novels, including Gods and Monsters, which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film starring Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave. A Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the 2003 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, Bram has written for a broad range of publications, including Out, Premiere, and Architectural Digest.