(This piece originally appeared on Nautilus.) About six years ago, I was putting a new roof on a 200-year-old house on an island in Maine when I got a call from Justin Timberlake’s cousin and assistant, a girl named Melissa. I put down my nail gun, told my boss I was taking five, and answered.
After teaching an all-day open house memoir-writing workshop last Sunday, one of my students came up to me and identified herself as being a reporter from the New York Post. Apparently they are planning to write another story about me. Considering the last article they wrote was entitled "Idiot prosti-teacher didn't…
Those of you who were waiting with bated breath for Amanda Knox and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to pen dueling memoirs will rejoice at the news that both have acquired literary agents. According to TMZ, Knox has signed with Robert Barnett, who has also represented a bipartisan slate of political memoirists…
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has written a book. Unfortunately, much of that book tries to justify all that lying the Bush administration did to get us into Iraq. Fortunately, she spends some of the book indulging the public's desire to learn about how everyone in the Bush White House was behind closed…
Next year the British publisher of Anne Frank's diary will release a diary by Helga Weiss, one of the few children from the Czech ghetto of Terezin who survived Auschwitz. Weiss, who grew up to be an internationally known artist, was confronted by Josef Mengele in the camps, but managed to save herself and her mother…
Considering that the lion's share of her memoir, The Real Girl Next Door, is about her life with ex-husband Charlie Sheen, Denise Richards really could've raked his ass over the coals for what he put her through. But unfortunately for us—and her publisher—she chose to take the high road, never divulging the details of…
1. That week in 1975 she "disappeared" with Bob Marley.
Julian Assange said he hoped his memoirs "would become one of the unifying documents of our generation." That'll have to wait: The book's been postponed until further notice, because Assange is afraid of the contents being used against him legally.
If you're in the market for a truly inspiring memoir this year, you're in luck — Jesse James reportedly has a deal with Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The book will apparently come out later this year, so you only have a few months to wait for James's wisdom.
Call me old-fashioned, but I've always believed a certain degree of discretion — or, really, confidentiality — should prevail in professions like gynecology, drugstore clerking and bikini waxing. And now I'm thinking this should extend to bra-fitting.
Rachel Shukert's new memoir Everything Is Going To Be Great does something unfortunately rare in women's writing: celebrating mistakes.
Ready for another "coming-of-age" memoir? Well, since this one grows in a Bronx housing project and becomes a Supreme Court Justice, we are. Sonia Sotomayor just signed a book deal with Knopf for an as-yet-untitled memoir.
Well, that was quick. Sarah Brown, wife of former British PM Gordon, has announced that she's penning "a behind-the-scenes memoir about life at 10 Downing St." It's tentatively titled Behind the Black Door, and due out in March. [Yahoo]
The title Lonely tends to conjure up words like shy, sad, and withdrawn, so it's something of a surprise that Emily White has written an impassioned call to arms on behalf of a condition no one wants to talk about.
Extraordinary, Ordinary People — Condoleezza Rice's first of two memoirs — will be released in October. The book will discuss her family and mentors — readers will have to wait for the sequel for shoe-shopping tips
Jenny Sanford's book will be released on February 5th, a month earlier than expected, her publishers announced. And Ballantine Books has posted a lengthy synopsis of Staying True, the "candid and compelling memoir" of Sanford's "very public betrayal." [CNN, NYDN]
The news may be full of prominent
Serial memoirist Mary Karr has a new book out, and in a Double X interview she shares some interesting insights about women's autobiographical writing — and some annoying shit about how much god likes her.
As mentioned earlier, the cover of Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue was released today. Since we don't yet have access to the idiocy that lies beneath, we decided to take a closer look at the cover, from an artistic perspective.
HarperCollins Publishers has released images of Sarah Palin's memoir. Going Rogue shows Palin, framed against a cloudy sky, staring hard into the future. Judge it for yourself (if you can make it through 400 pages of this) November 17th. [USAToday]
Fleur Cowles, famed for helming the short-lived, innovative Flair magazine, her acumen as a hostess on both sides of the pond, and as author of the memoir She Made Friends and Kept Them, has died at 101. [NYT]
Martha Mason, whose memoir, Breath, chronicles living since the age of 11 in an iron lung following paralysis from polio, has died at 71. There are perhaps 30 Americans living in iron lungs. [NYT]
Leslie F. Miller's Let Me Eat Cake chronicles her cake addiction, the cult of cakes, and the history of cake. With, obviously, recipes. [WSJ]
A former homeless guy kinda misses being homeless. His girlfriend doesn't get it.
Is anybody else sick of the six-word phenomenon
Two years after Kurt Vonnegut's death, academic Loree Rackstraw is revealing the details of their four decade relationship in an "intimate biography." Says Rackstraw, "It was a friendship unlike any I've had with anyone." [Telegraph]
"It has been a living hell." The premise of the bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning — now deluxed and re-released for the holidays — is simple: sum up your life in six words. The results run the gamut from poignant — "On the playground, alone. 1970, today" — to needlepoint-pillow: "It got better after middle age." It's…
People keep sending us this Times of London article entitled "I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty." Two things about that. One: incest is not okay. It's not ever okay. Two: I'm sick to death of people writing first-person essays about bad behavior and expecting that the mere act of writing about it absolves …
Miley Cyrus just signed a 7-figure contract to write her memoirs. The girl is fifteen years old. What is there to write about? She was born...and then now. •Wanna see Penelope Cruz naked and getting it on with Sir Ben Kingsley? Click here [link NSFW, obvs] for nude scenes from their forthcoming film, Elegy. • Days…
