Paul Monette, 49, a writer whose autobiography, "Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story," a memoir of suppressing and then celebrating his homosexuality, won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, died Friday at home in West Hollywood, Calif.
A friend, said the cause was complications from AIDS.
BMr. Monette said that writing the autobiography "literally kept me alive" after he contracted AIDS.
He was born in Lawrence, Mass. In "Becoming a Man," he described growing up in a middle-class world in which he became obsessed with his homosexual yearnings but had to suppress them.
Educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and Yale University, he taught English at Milton Academy in Milton, Mass., and Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Mass.
Mr. Monette publicly acknowledged his homosexuality in 1974.