Biographies & Memoirs

Barry Diller’s book is about much more than business. It is a remarkably honest and entertaining account of his personal journey and a fascinating tour through show business and digital media.

One spring morning, Kathryn Schulz went to lunch with a stranger and fell in love. Having spent years looking for the right relationship, she was dazzled by how swiftly everything changed when she finally met her future wife....

There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed....

Accidentally on Purpose dives into Kristen Kish’s childhood as a Korean adoptee in the Midwest, finding purpose in kitchens, and becoming the season 10 winner of—and now host—of Top Chef all the while navigating life in the spotlight.

An intimate, hilarious memoir of art, friendship, queerness, and found family by Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey, stars of The L Word—including never-before-shared stories and photos from behind the scenes of the show and their personal lives.

Black transgender luminary Tourmaline brings to life the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the most important and remarkable figures in LGBTQIA+ history, revealing her story, her impact, and her legacy.

Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human experience of searching for ourselves and our place in this complicated world.

One of the most decorated and celebrated women’s basketball players of all time breaks down her ultimate recipe to success, using her own deeply inspiring journey to teach readers how to live bravely, unapologetically, and with purpose.

From Melissa Febos, the national bestselling author of Girlhood, comes an examination of the solitude, freedoms, and feminist heroes she discovered during a year of celibacy and a wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge.

The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells - and told by the bombshell herself....

A humorous collection of autobiographical essays from comedian and Somebody Somewhere actor Jeff Hiller, who shares his journey from growing up “profoundly gay” in 1980s Texas to his experiences as an inept social worker and how he clawed, scraped, and brawled to Hollywood’s lower middle-tier.

What is the difference between men and women? Jennifer Finney Boylan examines the divisions—as well as the common ground—between the genders, and reflects on her own experiences, both difficult and joyful, as a transgender American.

This is not your mother's memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the listener through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist.

For nearly four decades, David Sedaris has faithfully kept a diary in which he records his thoughts and observations on the odd and funny events he witnesses....

Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison-abolitionist movements for more than 50 years....

In this remarkable memoir, former Olympian and Kardashian family member Caitlyn Jenner reveals shocking and heartbreaking stories from her journey to become a transgender woman and fight for the LGBTQ+ community....

GENDER EUPHORIA: a powerful feeling of happiness experienced as a result of moving away from one's birth-assigned gender....

The relationship between Freddie Mercury and Jim Hutton evolved over several months in 1984 and 1985. Even when they first slept together, Hutton had no idea who Mercury was, and, when the star told him his name, it meant nothing to him....

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher—her female teacher—she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can’t yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown.

Marie didn't expect to be given the opportunity to go to a new universe when she died, but when it was offered she held to the offer with all her might. Taking the name of Talyn, she was accompanied to the new world by the goddess Melody as her assistant....

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of being Anne Sexton) gave him away...

Explore the trailblazing lives of 30 trans people who radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history.

A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays—part memoir, part manifesto—that explore the author’s coming of age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame....

For the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White....

The legendary frontman of Judas Priest, one of the most successful heavy metal bands of all time, celebrates five decades of heavy metal in this tell-all memoir....

Writing in his own singular voice, Barry Diller delivers both an astute and entertaining business memoir and a surprisingly frank coming-of-age story. After starting his career in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, Diller went on to have one of the most extraordinary ascents in show business history, inventing the TV Movie of the Week for ABC at age twenty-seven, becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures at age thirty-two, and launching the Fox TV network at age forty-four.

In the early 2000s, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey—both young artists trying to figure it all out—met at auditions for an unknown little TV show. Given that it was a show about lesbians living in Los Angeles, with the first ever ensemble cast of openly queer female characters, Kate and Leisha knew the project was going to be unlike anything else out there—that is, if it even got picked up.

“Thank god the revolution has begun, honey.” Rumor has it that after Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, she picked up a shard of broken mirror to fix her makeup. Marsha, a legendary Black transgender activist, embodied both the beauty and the struggle of the early gay rights movement. Her work sparked the progress we see today, yet there has never been a definitive record of her life. Until now.

In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break: For three months she would abstain from dating, relationships, and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another with men and women. As she puts it, she could trace a “daisy chain of romances” from her adolescence to her midthirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster.

Candace Parker is a living legend. Her storied career includes three WNBA titles, two Olympic gold medals, and countless MVP Awards. Her career accolades are endless and her impact on the WNBA beyond measure, but Candace is even more inspiring off the court. A proud wife and mother of three, whose love story resonated with the LGBTQ+ community around the world, Candace is fiercely purpose-driven, paving the way for the WNBA’s rise in American culture, and for female basketballers to have the impact and platform that used to be reserved for the NBA. But this success didn’t happen by accident.

For years, Tommy Dorfman turned her back on her thoughts and emotions, hoping they’d simply go away. After a lifetime of confusion, she finally gained clarity around her gender and began to transition. But there were still parts of herself she’d locked away, elements of her story that she needed, for the first time, to fully confront. She sought guidance in a tarot deck. Maybe This Will Save Me is structured through the cards of that tarot pull.

So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.

When Wilco's 2007 album Sky Blue Sky was infamously criticized as "dad rock," Niko Stratis was a twenty-five-year-old closeted trans woman working in her dad's glass shop in the Yukon Territory. As she sought escape from her hypermasculine environment, Stratis found an unlikely lifeline amid dad rock's emotionally open and honest music. Listening to dad rock, Stratis could access worlds beyond her own and imagine a path forward.

It’s 1996, and Jeremy Atherton Lin has met the boy of his dreams—a mumbling, starry-eyed Brit—just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights including immigration. The pair steals away to remote forests and vast deserts, London fashion shows and Berlin sex clubs, dinner parties, back alleys, East Village hotel rooms, and San Francisco dives. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in a “city of refuge.”

Does peaking in high school ruin you for life? Was Miley Cyrus right, is it all about the climb (when it comes to building a career?) And what - scientifically - is the best way to mend a broken heart? Comedian Suzi Ruffell is considering life's big questions. In this brutally honest, funny, and often moving memoir, Suzi winningly tells her life story, and asks a host of experts to answer the tricky questions it prompts along the way. Diamond life advice comes from the likes of Elizabeth Day, Dolly Alderton, Charlene Douglas, Laura Bates, Dr Kirren Schnack, and more.

Highlighting influential individuals from 1850-1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy, and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term.

In sixteen wholly original essays that blend memoir, cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and a dash of fanfiction, Walker places her own experiences within the larger context of the pressing and underdiscussed aspects of contemporary American womanhood that make up daily life. She explores the allure and violence of assimilating into white womanhood in all its hegemonic glory, exposes the ways in which the truth of trans women's reproductive healthcare is erased in favor of reactionary narratives, and considers how our agency is stripped from us—purely on account of our bodies.

Charlie Bird—the viral face of BYU during his years as Cosmo the Cougar—made waves across the nation in February when he came out and revealed to BYU fans that he is gay. Now, in Without the Mask, Bird reflects on how his identity has strengthened his testimony and how he views his sexual orientation in conjunction with his faith in Jesus Christ. Alternating between memoir and teaching chapters, Bird’s touching and authentic prose chronicles his decision to openly share that he is gay and to remain active in the faith.

Through the eyes of a reporter and the stomach of a hungry gay man, Dining Out examines the rise, impact and legacies of the nation's gay restaurants past, present, and future, connecting meals with memories. Hamburger Mary’s, Florent, a suburban Denny’s queered by kids: Piepenburg explores how these and many other gay restaurants, coffee shops, diners, and unconventional eateries have charted queer placemaking and changed the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement for the better.

Raven E. Black never thought she'd be a Tarot reader. Missionary? Teacher? Writer? Sure. Tarot Reader? No way! But Raven followed her path and wrote the bestselling memoir, The Reluctant Tarot Reader: Adventures in the Gypsy Trade (2011) while continuing to explore what it means to be a professional Tarot reader and healer. With this new book of essays, The Reluctant Tarot Reader: 21 Years. 78 Lessons, we now have an additional 78 lessons that Raven has learned over two decades and thousands of clients -- with spectacular successes and stumbles along the way. What is life, if not a matter ...

Pete Crighton came of age in the early/mid 1980s in the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Growing up in Toronto, he was terrified that his friends and schoolmates would find out that he was “different” at a time when being gay felt like a death sentence. His only comfort was music, the songs a balm to his painful adolescence. Struggling to make sense of his sexuality and fear of the disease stifled Crighton as a sexual being. Instead of exploring sex, he began curating a massive music library.

TALES OF A CRESTVIEW KID is a debut memoir about a teenaged, horror-loving, heavy metal lesbian in smalltown PA during the 70s through the 90s. It is a heartfelt collection of comedic tales about questionable ghosts, strange family, stranger friends, and shady characters through a lense dipped in LSD.

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality.

Five years after the death of his husband, G. Scott Graham thought he had equanimity. He thought he had made peace with his grief. But when a new love entered his life, everything shifted. The grief came back—different this time, disguised as hope, desire, and fear. And with it came a whole new set of questions: Can you open your heart again after unimaginable loss? Can you love fully when you know what love can cost?

Marcos Gonsalez found his greatest source of joy when he encountered queer theory in college. As they put it, "queers and college go together like peanut butter and jelly," and for them, this was especially true. Seeing himself reflected in the work José Esteban Muñoz was life-changing: Muñoz's theory of disidentification empowered Gonsalez to reclaim their Latinx and queer identities—and inspired him to push back against the largely-white monolith of queer theory.