Ms. von Rydingsvard earned an MFA from Columbia University in 1975, and since then has been recognized with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, aGuggenheimFellowship and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
When White moved to France in 1983 through a prestigious GuggenheimFellowship for writing, he thought he was escaping this new disease, at least for a while.