The changing lives of gay men, particularly as they are devastated by AIDS, continue to shape White's work. His collection of stories with Adam Mars-Jones, The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (1988), was one of the first works of serious fiction to treat the impact of AIDS.

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In a 1987 essay in Artforum, White summarizes his obligation to gay culture in these words: "To have been oppressed in the '50s, freed in the '60s, exalted in the '70s, and wiped out in the '80s is a quick itinerary for a whole culture to follow. For we are witnessing not just the death of individuals but a menace to an entire culture. All the more reason to bear witness to the cultural moment."

All of White's work can be seen as intimately bound to gay culture, simultaneously reflecting its shifting contours and shaping its most provocative edges.

In the twenty years since its first appearance in the West, AIDS has been the subject of a large body of literature, most of it written by gay men and much of it designed to expose readers as closely as possible to the emergency of the epidemic and the suffering of affected individuals.

After Stonewall, gay male literature became focused as a movement, aided by the development of gay newspapers, magazines, and quarterlies and the founding of serious gay and lesbian bookstores.

Gay- and lesbian-relevant themes and issues resonate throughout both classic and contemporary works of children's literature.

Two of the communities of Fire Island, New York--Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines--are famous as hedonistic resort towns for gay men and lesbians.

The gay and lesbian press is of prime importance in sustaining a frequently embattled minority and has been crucial in the development of a national mass movement for gay rights.

Since World War II, the gay male novel has progressively flourished in England and especially in America.

Travel has afforded gays and lesbians both freedom from the restraints of their own cultures and the erotic stimulus of exotic sexual customs and partners.

A circle of gay male writers in Manhattan who met a few times in 1980 and 1981, the members of the Violet Quill helped create the post-Stonewall renaissance of American gay male writing.

Allen Barnett wrote stories unlikely to be surpassed for their depiction of gay life at the height of the AIDS pandemic.

Controversial writer Dennis Cooper is best known for his series of strikingly original, critically acclaimed, albeit transgressive and contentious, novels exploring the nature of sexual obsession, alienation, brutality, and death.

Perhaps the most accomplished of the "Generation X" writers, Bret Easton Ellis creates works distinguished by transgressive themes, a fascination with popular culture, and a spare but resonant prose style.

Jean Genet's work has left a powerful legacy to post-modernity and remains a provocation to questions of gay identity.

Noted for his elegant prose style and subtle representations of moral ambiguities, Alan Hollinghurst has in recent years emerged as Great Britain's most significant contemporary gay novelist.

Author and editor Adam Mars-Jones has written short stories as well as longer fiction on gay themes, including AIDS.