James L. White

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, White attended Indiana University and Colorado State University where he attained an MA in Literary Criticism. White taught as a poet in the schools on the Navajo Nation and in Minnesota public schools as part of a COMPAS pilot program that brought artists into schools to teach their craft. He also taught with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. While teaching, White edited the poetry collections Time of the Indian (1976), which featured the poetry of Indian schoolchildren, and First Skin Around Me (1976), which featured the work of contemporary Indian writers including Joy Harjo and Duane Niatum. His own books of poetry include the book The Salt Ecstasies, published in 1982 after his death by Graywolf Press. White died of cardiovascular disease on July 13, 1981, at the age of 45.

In 1983, a Minneapolis-based gay writers group led by Phil Willkie published the first issue of The James White Review, a literary quarterly of gay men's writing. Initially intended to publish the works of writers native to White's Minneapolis, the group began accepting writing from across the United States and internationally by its second issue. Each issue contained poetry, prose, photography and other artwork centered around the gay male experience. The magazine published in Minneapolis from 1983 until 1999 following its sale to the Washington, D.C.–based Lambda Literary Foundation for $1. The Lambda Literary Foundation continued publication of the magazine to its 1,700 subscribers until 2004. In 1991, Phil Willkie and Greg Baysans edited and published The Gay Nineties, an anthology of works originally published in the Review. The White Crane Institute is the current holder of the archives of the review and is considering options for future issues of the review.

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